Guild Wars 2

I’ve noticed, read and heard quite a few complaints, suggestions, or arguments concerning condition damage. I don’t want to get in to details here, though I’ll admit I think it needs work.

My question is:

A) is there a general consensus within the community that Condition Damage is in need of some kind of change/rework/buffing/etc in order to be viable/equal/fun?*

B) if yes to the above, does Anet know/acknowledge this? have they said they think it needs work, or have they said they’re working on it?

*I mostly refer to my sphere of play, which is PvE. I don’t know much about the PvP/WvW balances.

please note, I’m not looking for discussions on why, what or how. I just want to know if there’s a general feeling, and if so, what’s being done about it. I’m happy to discuss details in another thread.

A) In pve yes because of the stacking limit (this mainly effects world bosses and pugs for dungeons).
B) I am not sure but it was/is discussed in the forums in detail so one would think they are aware of it…

little old now, as it was pushed down the pages…

but worth the read.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Condition-Damage-in-PvE-Overview/first

PvP not really needed to change

PvE – We’ve already seen changes to encounters that reward Condi damage

WvW – not really. Large scale condi’s become less useful. Small scale they still shine.

Well, the why is kind of related.

Bosses in pve shouldn’t have a condition cap because it makes condition builds ineffective. Unfortunately, as I understand it, the calculations involved makes it too kitten the servers.

Possible solutions: for damaging conditions (bleeds, poison etc.)that max out do some direct damage instead. For instance if somebodytries to inflict bleeding on a monster that would normally to 100 damage over 3 seconds, but 25 stacks of bleeding are already there, give it 150 direct damage. Similarly if the time limit cap has been reached for poison.

For stuff like confusion, weakness and vulnerability, using something like life stealing instead seems a good idea.

A) Yes.
B) Not really. I think they commented on it back when the game launched, saying the cap was due to technical difficulties. As far as I know, there’s been complete radio silence since then.

They have mentioned that there are technical issues and if they find what they consider a viable option they will implement it.
If the technical issues are solved you run into the problem of being too powerful. Now 1 good person on a husk at tr-wurm melts it in 25 sec or so. With 2 good people that have non-overlap on conditions it melts in 15 seconds. If all conditions from all players where viable the creatures would not even get off the ground before they where dead. This would apply to everything in game not just those niche mobs we have now with high toughness.

Ropechef.6192:

little old now, as it was pushed down the pages…

but worth the read.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Condition-Damage-in-PvE-Overview/first

I saw that. it’s a good read, but I think the guy underestimates the importance of the cap. I feel that the cap punishes condition damage players for grouping up – which feels silly in an MMO.

A) Yes, at least for PvE. That anyone running a condition build does not want anyone else with a condition build anywhere near them is a big problem.

B) Yes, ANet commented around launch and just after launch assuring us that the Conditions system would continue to be worked on and changes should be forthcoming. Fast forward 2 years later and nothing changed.

More recently, Gaile posted on the forum regarding Conditions and confirmed that ANet is still working on the system but c/would not clarify beyond that nor when we might see it in-game.

I’ve not really followed much on GW2 outside of in-game stuff – are Anet usually good at communicating with the community? do they usually fix this sort of thing quickly/well/at all?

Yargesh.4965:

If the technical issues are solved you run into the problem of being too powerful. Now 1 good person on a husk at tr-wurm melts it in 25 sec or so. With 2 good people that have non-overlap on conditions it melts in 15 seconds. If all conditions from all players were viable the creatures would not even get off the ground before they where dead. This would apply to everything in game not just those niche mobs we have now with high toughness.

Translation: “Condition users have to put up with their conditions doing no damage in PvE group events because otherwise conditions — acknowledged by the number crunchers to do less damage than power builds — would be too powerful.”

Perhaps what you mean to say is that if a segment of the players at these group events were to suddenly be allowed to do their normal damage (i.e., their solo damage), the mobs might need to scale better.

And it’s not like power builds melt mobs in group events …. oh, wait.

Gray.9041:

I’ve not really followed much on GW2 outside of in-game stuff – are Anet usually good at communicating with the community? do they usually fix this sort of thing quickly/well/at all?

Communicating – No.
Fixing quickly – Noooooooooooo.
Fixing well – Sometimes? In the context of balance, that’s highly subjective.

Gray.9041:

Ropechef.6192:

little old now, as it was pushed down the pages…

but worth the read.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Condition-Damage-in-PvE-Overview/first

I saw that. it’s a good read, but I think the guy underestimates the importance of the cap. I feel that the cap punishes condition damage players for grouping up – which feels silly in an MMO.

its not the cap that is the problem.

fully buffed and tossing max conditions out. you are still doing around 30 percent less Damage than power.

So, if you remove the cap the build would have to be able to get to, and maintain something to the tune of 40 some odd bleed stacks, etc. JUST to be able to match a power builds output.

Personally, I think that allowing Vulnerability to add its effects to condition damage would be the best way to go. It would put Condition damage at least on par with power while still maintaining the the ramp up time and over time effect of how a condition build is supposed to work.

Anet has given zero feedback on the issue….

Players have offered ideas for years with no response…

This thread will be ignored…

Husk in Silverwastes is a glowing example of just how broken the whole situation is. Non-condition classes over-write actual condition classes… The boss scales with more people… the damage stays the same… the event fails…

…the event fails not because of the players, but because the mechanics are so broken they cannot be overcome.

Conditions are broken in multiple ways.

1. Less dps than power builds. Even if you have maxed might, maxed condi dmg, and 100% uptime of max stacks of every condition (not even theoretically possible currently), you still do ~30% less dmg than a power build.

That is assuming a necro with terror, 100% fear uptime, 100% 25 stacks of torment (currently 3 is the max), 100% 25 stacks of bleeding, 100% burn and 100% poison. It is closer to 40% less dmg for non necros.

Secondly there is the problem of overwriting conditions. For some reason the devs let power users have conditions as well, and the last applied condition bumps out the previous condition, meaning a warrior with 0 condition damage will quickly overwrite the bleeds of a necro with 2200 condition damage. meaning in any groups more than 2 your dps is reduced even further, to ~90% less than a power build.

Finally there is the problem of gear scaling. Going from full exotic to full ascended zerker gear (armor, weapons, trinkets) gives a zerker ~21% more dps. Going from full exotic to full ascended rabid gear gives a condition build ~5% more dps.

Ezeriel.9574:

Anet has given zero feedback on the issue….snip

That is wholly untrue. One of the biggest threads involving conditions Anet stepped in to explain just part of why conditions are the way they are (e.g. cost, sever bandwidth). Most people who cared to follow the issue know this. Then not too long ago, Anet commented again on it stating that they have been looking into it but not promising or saying anything more than that. You might have to do some research but if you take the time to look for an answer instead of just going with how you feel, you might surprise yourself.

This goes for everybody commenting. I know searching the forums is nigh impossible, but this issue has been commented on officially by Anet. They are aware of the state of condition damage. We won’t hear anything more until they have something worth talking about.

Conditions should never out-damage regular damage on PvE trash mobs due to the fact a lot of people fail to recognize condition damage totally ignores all toughness values, and condition damage builds can be optimized for DPT throughputs while building into one of the most durable stat combinations in the game and supporting directly by durability-focused traits/stats.

Conditions, without absolutely massive overhauls, will never see extended viability in the dungeon speed running scene unless encounters are created in which the mobs have excessively high toughness. The problem is that someone will do the math and the dungeon will remain figured out – if the time advantage gained via conditions is worthwhile, then conditions become the new meta, etc.

In the sPvP format, they’re by far stronger and more effective than regular damage in most cases. I can get my durable P/D thief or S/S war ticking for 2k/s bleeds, whereas my full signet stab thief (which is the second-highest-bursting build possible in the game) will stab for maybe 10k. The other builds are by far more durable and also thus have access to utility skills, which signet stab does not. The low removal access, lower physical damage, nerfed skill damage coefficients for many classes, and inherently higher toughness in PvP makes conditions all the more potent.

For WVW, condition builds are the best builds for small groups and roaming/havoc. I’ve recently had a lot of new people ask me for help with the thief class and assistance with learning my D/D build. Most of them came from playing P/D conditions, and most of them have had extensive difficulty either re-learning combat or learning it truly for the first time. A lot of condition builds are overly-easy to play, and as one of my most recent tutees stated, “Dire conditions really is easy mode and I guess I get why people called me cheese :\” The only reason you don’t see conditions used so heavily in WvW blobs is because of the massive healing and cleansing created by many guardians laying down light fields, eles’ AOE cleansing on water, etc., and a lot of this is done on the sheer basis that blobs are inherently weak to conditions without being set up in a way that hard-counters them.

Does anyone know how to rework conditions to be more balanced across game types? Not as far as I know. That’s why they’re not currently. Uncapping would break PvP and possibly WvW (definitely on the small scale), and also as stated by ANet, overly-strenuous on the game servers.

Conditions aren’t “bad” in PvE, though, as many people seem to want to claim. They’re just sub-optimal. Unless you’re trying to break world-record speed runs, most parties will not even notice. I ran dungeons constantly on my S/S bleed war, and had no troubles finding groups or with people who complained about me using conditions. Actually, in some of the runs, I was out-damaging the other berserker-geared players.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Conditions are broken in multiple ways.

1. Less dps than power builds. Even if you have maxed might, maxed condi dmg, and 100% uptime of max stacks of every condition (not even theoretically possible currently), you still do ~30% less dmg than a power build.

The problem is the stacking of conditions because not only that the game is tracking the damage from buff, it also tracking the number of stacks and the duration. By removing the stacking, Anet can tweak the condition damage by adjusting only the damage and duration. Applying the same condition should only extend or refresh the condition. The stacking really needs to go so they can normalize the damage to match the DPS of power builds.

In a boss fights, the similar conditions will stack, only to save space, for each player applying the condition but will not overwrite each other. So a Power Warrior will not overwrite the bleed condition of a condition build since they will have their own icon in the stack.

Allowing multiple stacks from one person will reach that 25 stack limit rather quickly as we see today. If each person can only have one stack, the game will have an easier time managing the conditions during a boss fight.

Ezeriel.9574:

~Snip~

Husk in Silverwastes is a glowing example of just how broken the whole situation is. Non-condition classes over-write actual condition classes… The boss scales with more people… the damage stays the same… the event fails…

…the event fails not because of the players, but because the mechanics are so broken they cannot be overcome.

You’ve obviously been in some bad maps then, especially the bolded part. I’ve seen plenty of times when Copper is the first of the Champions to go down, and in less than 60 seconds. Why? Because the players know what to do, even when someone is doing AoE. People just make excuses that it was the AoE that caused it to fail when it was really just players not paying attention and doing their “jobs”(read: someone ‘only one’ kiting the adds which give regen and someone else blowing up the bubbles before they reach the boss and explode against and heal him).

^I’ve seen Husk downed with 3+ minutes to spare, and I’ve seen it fail with 40 people there, and they weren’t doing AOE.

If enough people show up, that boss scales out of control, because after the first few condi builds, more people only hurt the situation.

Like a maxed out condi guard, that can’t get any burn damage in, because four other guards are all procing burning, and they’re spec’d to bunker.

nightwulf.1986:

Ezeriel.9574:

Anet has given zero feedback on the issue….snip

That is wholly untrue. One of the biggest threads involving conditions Anet stepped in to explain just part of why conditions are the way they are (e.g. cost, sever bandwidth).

Saying “we can’t ’cause bandwidth” and “we’re looking into it” isn’t feedback.

Feedback would be explaining why some of the thousands of suggestions, made by players, won’t work.

I’d like to know why the bleed damage on rifle was removed, and yet every third crit a warrior lands procs a bleed.

If you’ve got five warriors at a world boss, and each one has five stacks of bleeding, and a necro shows up…

PvE conditions are a shunned part of the world, only a few people actively run them due to a lot of bigger and smaller problems. The concept would and should be nice.
In PvP Conditions have been deemed so OP they nerfed ALL condition durations in both PvP, WvW and PvE to make conditions more “acceptable”, destroying which was left of the condition possibilities…

But since launch:
We noticed capping, This isn’t a problem when soloing content, BUT…
When doing things with other players we tend to notice a few things.

Many conditions are overwritten and conditions are still not viable for farming, world bosses, dungeons, WvW leaving them suitable for PvE general and stories.

Damage wise conditions cannot hope to come in the neighbourhood of DPS damage, while 1 Condi clear can remove a while stack of bleeds, or torment.

To make conditions remotely viable they should be changed:

Conditions should be changed so as to start scaling from 0 damage and buffed to at least twice their present values on 1600-1800 condition damage on scaling MINIMUM

Conditions should affect objects, Ingame you can kick an armored door asnd it gets damage, But I can set it on fire, no effect…. Why?

Condition Traits shouldn’t be minor traits, They should be a choice. If you take swordsmen , you should get 66% chance to do bleeding on a crit, not for taking a few points in precision. It would change the meta a bit but open up possibilities for condition users. Most Hybrid users are useing condition weaponry as well, sometimes with a DPS set. Removing the 1 bleed from rifle and giving it to LB auto would be very nice. Just make sure weapons are dedicated DPS OR Damaging conditions.

The exception is confusion which needs a doubling in duration for PvE AND a boost in damage due to the complete destuction of its functionality in PvE

CONFUSION:
The extreme nerf in condition duration in effect destroyed the mesmer proffession due to the effect confusion was halved in damage, AND halved or worse in duration. in effetc reducing the effects of confusion in PvP and WvW to 20-25% of what it used to be. Problem was in PvE the attacks are spread more thinly and with long telegraphes, causing such a low attack speed confusion was rendered ineffective from the start. Torment was added to mesmer scepter to offset this loss more then a year later, but the proffesion meant to shutdown enemies was shutdown itself.

BLEEDING: A lot of Trait trees have the application of Bleeding on the minor traitline, often passive, Making bleeding presently the most unreliable damage system for a conditions user, Unfortunately its also the condition with the most damage potential for a lot of condition users… This destoys warriors and to a lesser extent engineer, rangers and necro’s, most durations were halved by the patches, but as most bleeds were overwiteen long before Most people haven’t really noticed…

BURNING: Looking further we see burning, which is cast auto by guardians on the Xth attack, Elementalists spam fire when on staff…. Destroying Warrior even further, and creating additional loss for engineer, ranger, and for a time Necro (when Dhuumfire was used) Fire as asource of condition damage is very powerfull when soloing, when in a group it’s -Useless-

POISON: This is used by thieves, also untraited due to the damage buff on poisoned targets. While not strictly a damage condition (as it also reduces healing effectiveness) it does make poison unreliable as well. The only benefit from poison comes from the denial of healing. durations were less affected by the condition nerfs

All in all this means bleeding and fire and to a lesser extent poison are both no longer viable to do damage effectively as a condition user. Confusion was almost eridicated.
Leaving: Torment

TORMENT
Torment was introduced later to open up “condition stacks for small groups”and while it functions reasonably in this aspect it is not as powerfull as bleeds nor does it deny movement as well als chilled (as an example)
Torment is nice but only when kiting, As most dungeons are played with stacking meta’s it’s left being a poor mans ‘bleed’ as the bleeds do not work.

Regarding ArenaNet
ArenaNet has said they’ve been working on conditions. Hope so. They confirmed the problems, and said they do not have an answer. They would look into it, that has been 12-18 months ago if not more… No ETA.

I just checked my 15 characters:
DPS: 7 (W,W,G,G,El,N,R)
Hybrid: 4 (El,R,W,N)
Condi: 4 (N,T,M,R)

Recap from above

I’ll shorten this:
Conditions have been nerfed a few times
Conditions are capped
Conditions are not compeditive in damage output vs. DPS atm.
Conditions are hampered by empty conditions (ppl not using condition damge)
Condition traits should ALL be selectable, not based on minor traits
Conditions should be coupled to dedicated weapons.
Condition damage should start with 0 dmg@ 0 condition damage, 0 dmg = ignore
Condition damage should scale way faster then It does now.
Condition duration should be buffed
Conditions should affect Objects
-added-
Condition weapons should be buffed a bit or scale with BOTH power and condition damage.
Condition caps if needed should be opened up a biut to allow for more stacks
normal enemy: 25 (as it is now)
veteran enemy 35
Elite enemy 50
Champion 100 (could accept 50)
Legendary : 250 (could accept 100+)You just get your servers straight, The whoile world and their pets and minis come to kill legendaries, but if you come with a condi build you will just barely get a tag. I’ve come late on bosses and with 50% to go I got noi chest, If I go on a pew pew LB Ranger I Use 1 long range shot and I have full credit. from 1500 range.

Only point of interest vulnerability would be OP if stacks could be 100 , as you would actually oneshot the boss… (due to the complete removal of armor.)

Anet told us they are aware and are looking for solutions, No ETA.

Ezeriel.9574:

^I’ve seen Husk downed with 3+ minutes to spare, and I’ve seen it fail with 40 people there, and they weren’t doing AOE.

If enough people show up, that boss scales out of control, because after the first few condi builds, more people only hurt the situation.

Like a maxed out condi guard, that can’t get any burn damage in, because four other guards are all procing burning, and they’re spec’d to bunker.

nightwulf.1986:

Ezeriel.9574:

Anet has given zero feedback on the issue….snip

That is wholly untrue. One of the biggest threads involving conditions Anet stepped in to explain just part of why conditions are the way they are (e.g. cost, sever bandwidth).

Saying “we can’t ’cause bandwidth” and “we’re looking into it” isn’t feedback.

Feedback would be explaining why some of the thousands of suggestions, made by players, won’t work.

I’d like to know why the bleed damage on rifle was removed, and yet every third crit a warrior lands procs a bleed.

If you’ve got five warriors at a world boss, and each one has five stacks of bleeding, and a necro shows up…

“I certainly agree that we need to improve effectiveness of condition damage builds against objects. We have some ideas, but none of them are simple and easy to implement/test. Rest assured it is something we recognize as a problem.

Jon (Peters) " From 2012

“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 (Peters)"_ From 2013

I get it, an answer isn’t an answer unless you says it is. That’s cool but this is effectively the level of communication you are going to see until they have something concrete to show. There is no point in repeating it and they have repeated it. They aren’t going to reveal everything to us. They’ve said as much and you are free to hold your breath until they give you the specifics you are asking for. I would love to see some action on this as well, but I’ve waited years in other games to see similar fixes come through. It’s already been 2+ years with conditions being the way they’ve been and the game hasn’t collapsed yet. If I could get developers to fast-track all of my suggestions I would but my impression is that development doesn’t work that way.

Also dredging this back out of the archives for reference, from an old interview:

There’s a cap on condition stacks of 25. In a scenario where you have two thieves attacking a boss and one of them can achieve a stack of 25 by themselves, the other one essentially becomes useless because they’ve got nothing to stack on. Is anything being done to address that to make them less redundant?

Colin: Currently no. Interesting statistic for you: every condition in the game costs server bandwidth. ‘Cause we have to track how often the condition is running, what the duration of that condition is and what the stack is. So the more stacks we allow them more expensive it gets because we’re tracking every additional stack on there. And so we could, say, you can have infinite stacks. Number one: that becomes really unbalanced. But number two: it’s actually extremely expensive for us, on a performance basis. That’s one of those weird, kind of back-end server issues that can help make game designer decisions regardless of what you want to do with it.

One of the things people have been talking about is having their own individual stack limit that they can apply, rather than an infinite amount on one boss.

Colin: Yes, it’s tough. It’s certainly something we can look at, it does drastically change the way that the professions play, right? It does say “you can no longer stack all of one type of condition”. It might change the skills on each profession if we were to do that. It would encourage a little more group play to some extent. It’s not something we’re really talking about, but it’s an interesting idea. I’d have to think a lot about what the effects of that would be overall, but it’s an interesting… interesting idea.

Unfortunate. But I can understand the reasoning. Still, it does feel like a conditional build gets the shaft when you, and the zerg, hits that 25 stacks on a World Boss.

Though . . . a hundred stacks of vulnerability might make a World Boss into a bunny.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Conditions are broken in multiple ways.

1. Less dps than power builds. Even if you have maxed might, maxed condi dmg, and 100% uptime of max stacks of every condition (not even theoretically possible currently), you still do ~30% less dmg than a power build.

The problem is the stacking of conditions because not only that the game is tracking the damage from buff, it also tracking the number of stacks and the duration. By removing the stacking, Anet can tweak the condition damage by adjusting only the damage and duration. Applying the same condition should only extend or refresh the condition. The stacking really needs to go so they can normalize the damage to match the DPS of power builds.

In a boss fights, the similar conditions will stack, only to save space, for each player applying the condition but will not overwrite each other. So a Power Warrior will not overwrite the bleed condition of a condition build since they will have their own icon in the stack.

Allowing multiple stacks from one person will reach that 25 stack limit rather quickly as we see today. If each person can only have one stack, the game will have an easier time managing the conditions during a boss fight.

This is how pretty much every other MMO on the market does it. Not sure why Anet decided to go with a more complicated, less effective, more bandwidth expensive method instead… it is one of the weirdest decisions of the game imo.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Conditions are broken in multiple ways.

1. Less dps than power builds. Even if you have maxed might, maxed condi dmg, and 100% uptime of max stacks of every condition (not even theoretically possible currently), you still do ~30% less dmg than a power build.

The problem is the stacking of conditions because not only that the game is tracking the damage from buff, it also tracking the number of stacks and the duration. By removing the stacking, Anet can tweak the condition damage by adjusting only the damage and duration. Applying the same condition should only extend or refresh the condition. The stacking really needs to go so they can normalize the damage to match the DPS of power builds.

In a boss fights, the similar conditions will stack, only to save space, for each player applying the condition but will not overwrite each other. So a Power Warrior will not overwrite the bleed condition of a condition build since they will have their own icon in the stack.

Allowing multiple stacks from one person will reach that 25 stack limit rather quickly as we see today. If each person can only have one stack, the game will have an easier time managing the conditions during a boss fight.

This is how pretty much every other MMO on the market does it. Not sure why Anet decided to go with a more complicated, less effective, more bandwidth expensive method instead… it is one of the weirdest decisions of the game imo.

Flavor-wise, a stack of bleed means that your target suffers from multiple cuts and punctures. A stack of torment means that your target is hallucinating multiple images that is tormenting him.

However, this flavor loses its taste when it comes to boss fights because a boss will have hundreds, if not thousands, of cuts and punctures coming from different sources.

To save the server and to improve game play, I think it would be better to simply abandon the flavor in favor of better performance.

Increasing the condition cap would require a lot of work. It might not be necessary, though.

The biggest problem with the cap isn’t that things are dying too slowly, but that players aren’t getting credit for the damage they would deal. What if players could get credit for mitigated condition damage?

The game could show us the total mitigated damage from a failed condition application as a single specially marked tick, and then give us credit toward rewards as if the damage had actually decreased the target’s health.

Would that work?

Gray.9041:

I’ve not really followed much on GW2 outside of in-game stuff – are Anet usually good at communicating with the community? do they usually fix this sort of thing quickly/well/at all?

Anet is terrible at communication. Their policy is to stay super tight-lipped about everything until it gets released. In the past when they tried to be more open, they failed at it by making promises they couldn’t keep, and they got backlash for it. As for fixing things quickly, nope. They are pretty hit or miss on this. If it’s a game-breaking bug they tend to be pretty quick. If it’s a non-game-breaking inconvenience like the condition cap, well… the game has been out for over two years and nothing so far.

nightwulf.1986:

“I certainly agree that we need to improve effectiveness of condition damage builds against objects. We have some ideas, but none of them are simple and easy to implement/test. Rest assured it is something we recognize as a problem.

Jon (Peters) " From 2012

“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 (Peters)"_ From 2013

I get it, an answer isn’t an answer unless you says it is. That’s cool but this is effectively the level of communication you are going to see until they have something concrete to show. There is no point in repeating it and they have repeated it. They aren’t going to reveal everything to us. They’ve said as much and you are free to hold your breath until they give you the specifics you are asking for. I would love to see some action on this as well, but I’ve waited years in other games to see similar fixes come through. It’s already been 2+ years with conditions being the way they’ve been and the game hasn’t collapsed yet. If I could get developers to fast-track all of my suggestions I would but my impression is that development doesn’t work that way.

The Ol’ Man’s been saying he’s gonna fix the garage door for a couple years now too… he says he’s got some ideas on how to do it too…

I ain’t holdin’ my breath on either one of them.

Hmm, I forgot about the conditions-on-objects problem.

Of course it doesn’t make sense to make a weapon rack bleed, but no less than it makes sense to inflict bleeding on an elemental. To me, this ties in with the crits-on-objects problem.

I say just convert all incoming conditions and crits on objects to stacks of “Cracked.” One stack of Cracked is the same as a few stacks of Vulnerability.

What I believe could help is having a choice for each weapon or each individual weapon skill of either DPS or DPS/Condi. This way we can customize builds to a far greater extent. Also, it could remove some of the washing out effect of condition damage. Stacking caps at worlds bosses and any mega HP creature needs to be adjusted.

DeWolfe.2174:

What I believe could help is having a choice for each weapon or each individual weapon skill of either DPS or DPS/Condi. This way we can customize builds to a far greater extent. Also, it could remove some of the washing out effect of condition damage. Stacking caps at worlds bosses and any mega HP creature needs to be adjusted.

Rebalancing each skill into a non-condition version would take a lot of unnecessary coding. Also, I don’t feel it would have a good impact on the community and build diversity. The zerker debate doesn’t need this added on top of it.

I would rather play with useful conditions than no conditions.

My summary: Its broked. Can it be fixed? Mebbe. Will it be? Probably no.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Snip

Again, blind suggestions like these would totally break WvW as a format as people seem to disregard the fact that condition damage is actually the most effective source of PvP damage in the entire game, in both PvP and WvW. It is ONLY ineffective in WvW blobbing because of the frequency of light fields used by guardians. Actually, half of the reason guardians are even in the GWEN WvW meta to begin with is explicitly for this capability due to the extreme power of conditions in PvP environments. In fact, despite all of the mass cleansing occurring in WvW blobs, condition reduction food is still a primary choice on the sheer basis that one player with an AOE condition applicator through the form of control conditions and confusion can single-handedly decide a fight with even sub-par targeting and timing.

Further, there are more high-damage condition applicators in the game which have no casting animation or cast time than physical damage attacks without such. Most of these applications are also rather ruthless with what they offer.

Balancing condition damage is not possible without an overhaul of the system, for damage solely from condition application in terms of DPS should provide strictly equivalent damage as Soldier’s gear (PTV). In its current state, it provides much more damage excluding the instances of stack capping and subsequently inhibits build diversity within a variety of classes and builds due to the sheer dependence of utilizing condition-cleansing utility effects and/or traits. Some classes also have imbalanced or blatantly sub-par means of cleansing conditions, especially over short periods of time.

Also your assessment of poison and torment is unbelievably flawed from a PvP/WvW perspective to the point where I am not even sure you have ever even tried these formats, for torment is the single strongest condition in the entire game by design, one of the most difficult to cleanse due to many builds or in some cases entire classes having no access to remove it without either traiting explicitly for torment removal or running Antitoxin Spray due to its late implementation, which is a terrible healing skill. Torment also poses a higher DPT than bleeding in PvP/WvW due to constant, necessary mobility, and suffers minimal losses of damage even against stationary targets compared to bleeding. Poison was designed for the healing cut, not as a source of DoT. That’s why the durations are long, the scaling is bad, and why on multiple occasions, AoE poison skills and effects have been explicitly nerfed solely because of their incredible and devastating impact in WvW. This was the excuse as explained by the developers for BOTH nerfs to choking gas, as well as a massive number of community complaints regarding the unbelievable potency of the skill’s previous effects and applications.

What people fail to understand is that the lack of viability of conditions in PvE is not because of an inherently-weaker design but because of the older PvE content design which does not do an adequate job of keeping condition users’ damage outputs comparable.

The problem lies in the content, not conditions. If anything, conditions in PvP and WvW across a variety of builds and classes need a town downwards paired with several other system changes due to their simplistic playstyles, obscene damage throughputs, extra utility over DPS builds, and inherently higher durability and resistance effects over physical damage builds.

DeceiverX.8361:

Conditions should never out-damage regular damage on PvE trash mobs due to the fact a lot of people fail to recognize condition damage totally ignores all toughness values, and condition damage builds can be optimized for DPT throughputs while building into one of the most durable stat combinations in the game and supporting directly by durability-focused traits/stats.

(All of what I’m going to say is in context of PvE)

To repeat this: direct damage builds that go full damage (glass cannon) are forced to invest in power, precision, ferocity, and have no further stats to take without losing damage. By comparison a condition-exclusive build needs only condition damage and (usually) precision. Because all equipment pieces worth talking about have 3 or more stat types on them, Condition builds are either forced to have hybrid damage (eg Rampager) or gain defensive stats (eg Rabid).

With that in mind, a build that is exclusively conditions (not hybrid) cannot be allowed to have a greater damage potential than a full glass-cannon build, since it does not sacrifice defensive stats.

This is why I think ArenaNet will never buff a pure condition build to match a pure direct-damage build.

Honestly I just wish it had been clearer from the start that condition damage is not an alternative to direct damage: it’s just an add-on. At most they’re an alternative to big critical hits.

The problem that we’re seeing here is one that was mirrored in GW1 for Years. PvP balance influences all other forms of gameplay. Yes, there are balance tweaks that make things work slightly differently, but for the most part they want classes to function the same way so that a player can transition easily from one format to another without having to relearn their entire class. Conditions are fine, and perhaps too strong in PvP, and yet too weak in PvE.

Gulesave.5073:

DeWolfe.2174:

What I believe could help is having a choice for each weapon or each individual weapon skill of either DPS or DPS/Condi. This way we can customize builds to a far greater extent. Also, it could remove some of the washing out effect of condition damage. Stacking caps at worlds bosses and any mega HP creature needs to be adjusted.

Rebalancing each skill into a non-condition version would take a lot of unnecessary coding. Also, I don’t feel it would have a good impact on the community and build diversity. The zerker debate doesn’t need this added on top of it.

I would rather play with useful conditions than no conditions.

Well, I’d rather play a with weapon set’s that aren’t hodgepodges. The reason why it’s Zerker or nothing is simply because there is no other comparable choice. Not to forget that condi damage output is certainly not balance across professions. For the remarks about ferocity, if condition damage required a Primer or Catalyst stat that functioned in a similar role as Ferocity, that would easily solve that problem.

Not to forget that condi damage output is certainly not balance across professions. For the remarks about ferocity, if condition damage required a Primer or Catalyst stat that functioned in a similar role as Ferocity, that would easily solve that problem.

It is based on multiple stats already…

There is still alot of triggers on crit, and you have need for 2-4 attributes depending on how you look at it.

- Condition damage (damage/tick)
- Condition duration ( amount of ticks)
- Toughness (you will need to stay alive while damage is ticking)
- Precision (to trigger crits for application of (well mostly bleeeds, but also vulnerability or weakness and so on.)

And there are differenced in condition potential for the proffessions, yes, as there are in DPS as well.

Highest condition damage can be achieved by Mesmer… WITH might and full buffs they should actually exceed 3200 almost reaching 3400 if completely tuned… Most conditions though are random and have extremely short durations for mesmer (dire, tuning crystals, runes of the undead, sigil of corruption& bursting, and super pizza power…).
Below there are all otheres except guardian. Reaching max 2700-2900
(dire, tuning crystals, runes of the undead, sigil of corruption& bursting, and super pizza power…)
Guardians can build quite some condition damage as stat, but lack the weapons to apply it. leaving only retaliation and burning… all other possible conditions are on sigils and runes..

nightwulf.1986:

Also dredging this back out of the archives for reference, from an old interview:

There’s a cap on condition stacks of 25. In a scenario where you have two thieves attacking a boss and one of them can achieve a stack of 25 by themselves, the other one essentially becomes useless because they’ve got nothing to stack on. Is anything being done to address that to make them less redundant?

Colin: Currently no. Interesting statistic for you: every condition in the game costs server bandwidth. ‘Cause we have to track how often the condition is running, what the duration of that condition is and what the stack is. So the more stacks we allow them more expensive it gets because we’re tracking every additional stack on there. And so we could, say, you can have infinite stacks. Number one: that becomes really unbalanced. But number two: it’s actually extremely expensive for us, on a performance basis. That’s one of those weird, kind of back-end server issues that can help make game designer decisions regardless of what you want to do with it.

One of the things people have been talking about is having their own individual stack limit that they can apply, rather than an infinite amount on one boss.

Colin: Yes, it’s tough. It’s certainly something we can look at, it does drastically change the way that the professions play, right? It does say “you can no longer stack all of one type of condition”. It might change the skills on each profession if we were to do that. It would encourage a little more group play to some extent. It’s not something we’re really talking about, but it’s an interesting idea. I’d have to think a lot about what the effects of that would be overall, but it’s an interesting… interesting idea.

yeah that was really good(excellent) news, but i think they dont wanna risk the rage of players “omg i cant kill, i must use more keys now!”, like whats happened with warrior, its still extremelly strong even outside shoutbow / condi bow builds yet player choose to play this due the lackness of effort and higher reward that is play with conditions.

one think i believe they dont noticed is that they got players used to play high damage wins over any other defense(in thief kinda makes sense this) reason if they make classes fighting with more effort required players will grudge because they need more work.
Look at the example of Ranger, longbow make huge damage no matter what range your are(it always did this damage but slower), bow mechanics in gw1 were amazing and required a litle bit knowledge to learn how use terrain to use best of the type of bow player were using.

Theres lot of stuff they could bring from gw1 that would balance more this game.

Softspoken.2410:

(All of what I’m going to say is in context of PvE)

To repeat this: direct damage builds that go full damage (glass cannon) are forced to invest in power, precision, ferocity, and have no further stats to take without losing damage. By comparison a condition-exclusive build needs only condition damage and (usually) precision. Because all equipment pieces worth talking about have 3 or more stat types on them, Condition builds are either forced to have hybrid damage (eg Rampager) or gain defensive stats (eg Rabid).

With that in mind, a build that is exclusively conditions (not hybrid) cannot be allowed to have a greater damage potential than a full glass-cannon build, since it does not sacrifice defensive stats.

This is why I think ArenaNet will never buff a pure condition build to match a pure direct-damage build.

Honestly I just wish it had been clearer from the start that condition damage is not an alternative to direct damage: it’s just an add-on. At most they’re an alternative to big critical hits.

And that’s exactly it; a lot of condition users, face it, do not use sinister gear, and make their comparisons in DPS via things like Rabid vs Berserker. Fact of the matter is that Rabid – and every other condition set except for sinister – should ALWAYS deal less DPS than berserker gear because all other condition damage sets provide a defensive stat bonus while berserker does not. It’s why I stated what I did before. Berserker is in the PvE meta because it provides optimal DPS. That’s a fact. It has nothing to do with anything else being overpowered or underpowered as much as it is a combination that:

- Condition users should have always been dealing lower DPS in PvE against non-tank mobs to begin with because of their lack of three offensive stat modifiers.

- Condition users against these mobs are facing the stack cap in PvE due to an absolute necessity of having it in PvP environments.

And subsequently I believe you are correct in that condition damage will not be buffed in its current state unless a massive rework is done to conditions and everything around them which would allow better balance and fewer discrepancies between the game modes.

Condition damage can and was designed to be a means of primary damage. Do recall that all condition ticks totally ignore all forms of damage mitigation, including armor and protection. That can allow for conditions to frequently out-damage berserker-geared players against enemies with high toughness values and/or constant protection. With ramping damage that takes a bit to get moving, that is why condition gear combinations were originally all designed with at least one defensive stat; it needed a bit more durability to get past the initial frequent burst/survive a bombardment of physical damage hits to retaliate, and then eventually overwhelm the opponent.

Which is why it’s currently too strong in PvP environments, notably WvW. Access to dire gear which provides some of the best damage mitigation in the game still allows for condition users to fully-optimize their tick damage while remaining extremely durable. Additionally, with condition damage’s original implementations, condition damage modifier traits were placed heavily in the defensive lines for most builds, further emphasizing more durability which has made the play style so difficult to deal with, and sPvP which promotes small group play helps prevent stack capping problems between multiple condition users.

Hence my position in that I firmly do not believe conditions need a buff in any way, shape or form, or any rework attempting to bolster damage outputs of condition builds. They are and will remain a weaker source of damage in PvE due to the necessity of keeping them in check in PvP environments (and even now that’s arguable), sorry to say, but that comes from more issues with dungeon design than anything.

I will, however, support any kind of implementation which would allow for condition users to see a more balanced style of play across the formats than their heavy dominance in PvP modes and relative weakness in PvE. That said, it would require extensive work and more complex systems tied to conditions and how they scale and deal damage; critical conditions, alternative application techniques, a re-evaluation of gear, a rework of healing skills and cleansing abilities and the likes are things that would probably need to be evaluated and done to help improve the state of the game.

But simple buffs under any circumstance absolutely will not suffice and would destroy the rest of the game.

I’ll reflect on zerk should do greater dmg thn rabid.I disagree. With the rampup time in mind I could safely say condition characters should be able to dish out 20% more damage with conditions and then they still could be outdamaged by zerks by using a clean at certain moments, cleansing ire warriors can clean 2-3 conditions every 7-10s, without using additional cleans, Each clean resetting the damage output for a condi build to 0 , new stacks heve to be applied, a new rampup is started.

Saying DPS should outweigh DOT in max damage is saying i do not want any condi builds in game IMHO.

The fact remains ppl runnning zerk want to kep their leisure spot and not invest in condition clearing, Conditions are meant to deter long dps engagements, Due to the fact it ignores conditions. leaving spikes as only alternative. PVT is a guard against spike damage, zerk is an all in bet. A full condi build can be shutdown by aoe clears.

Problem with PvP seems to be the fact most players seem to play condi and while condi removal is struggling to keep up with clears 1vs 1 it fails horribly vs 3,4,5 players.

Toughness is a way of keeping you alive vs DPS, clears is a way of keeping you alive vs conditions. You could run hoelbrak/melandru/antitoxin in WvW next to the classic lemongrass soup for a reduction of 60% of condition durations. Also a third of the zerk will be running runes of the trooper leaving condi specs only useable on the fringes, roamers or vs runners.

Stronger condi’s will mean people are going to rework builds, And seeing I’m a WvW/PvE player mostly, my concerns go to those 2 areas mostly… Condi’s were nerfed to unusable proportions in PvE due to problems player had in PvP, in WvW the zerg completely destroys any possibility for condition usage anyways. Showing the potential of AoE clears with condition removal food, runes, sigils and so on. In WvW hybrids as a niche product allowin users to solo scout and defend themselves, in PvE you just need hybrids over full condi due to the fact you find objects quite a lot and condi builds will need 20 hits while zerk needs 2

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

I’ll reflect on zerk should do greater dmg thn rabid.I disagree. With the rampup time in mind I could safely say condition characters should be able to dish out 20% more damage with conditions and then they still could be outdamaged by zerks by using a clean at certain moments, cleansing ire warriors can clean 2-3 conditions every 7-10s, without using additional cleans, Each clean resetting the damage output for a condi build to 0 , new stacks heve to be applied, a new rampup is started.

Saying DPS should outweigh DOT in max damage is saying i do not want any condi builds in game IMHO.

The problem is the condi tank gears like rabid and dire. Zerker you need 3 offensive stats, and condi you only need 1, so they can’t be more tanky and do more damage. And giving cleansing ire war as an example is not a good representation of all classes condi clearing capabilities.

I know focussing on conditions a lot more will shift the meta. It would be good.

Some condition clearing:

mantra build mesmer (maybe with torch), null field, or just reflect condition if possible
necro can remove conditions on kill (3)and on dagger offhand, can be sent to others, well of power
guardian, purity trait, signet of resolve, removal on shout, or just reflect condition if possible
Warrior cleansing ire, warhorn conversion, mending?
Ranger, healing spring… forgot others tbh.
Thief, clean on stealth…
Elementalist clean with water…

Engi I do not play.

Also Light fields and whirls and projectiles will make condi removing combo’s if I’m right.
Sigils of purity and generosity if i’m right, in wvw/pve: condition duration reduction through runes, (melandru, hoelbrak(,antitoxin))

Zerk is the EXTREME of damage gear

SOLDIERS = DIRE
KNIGHTS = RABID (well primary stat of knights is wrong, but the general idea is right…)
ZERK = CONDITION DMG/CONDITION DURATION/PRECISION

Just for the comparison.

Condition dmg as the main scaling
Condition Duration as the modifier
Precision to crit as a lot of conditions are procced on crit.

If you want to look at power and ferocity, you should compare it with condition damage AND duration. I find the comparison dire with pvt comparible just because it compares stats, not a personal feeling.

IMHO something like condi dmg/condi duration/precision would be a useless stat combo, as you need to stay alive during the time your conditions tick. Maybe this is achievable in PvE but in all other forms of play I think it would be vey weak… unless PU mesmer or Condi Thief maybe….

In the end leaving condition dmg/condition duration/toughness or DIRE or Rabid as better stat combos… Just because you will NEED time to do damage with DOT it isn’t called DAMAGE OVER TIME for nothing…..

And Dire =/= Zerk, I hope my explanation allows you to change your opinion

There is no condi duration armor, and only exotic weapons of it but it doesn’t have condi damage on it, which aren’t accessible in pvp.

If they had a glass cannon version like that it’d be interesting to see. I still think zerk should do more damage seeing as condi classes all use ranged for the most part, and their damage passively ticks so they don’t always need to land something. There’s still more risk in zerk imo.

IMHO the condition duration is being held back due to the problems with the conditions system.

The devs of A-Net didn’t nerf all durations to start the introduction of Condition Duration Armor, But it does show zerk is something else then condi/vit/tough.

I’d expect a condi duration armor if they’d ever find a fix for the condi system which is “ETA-Unknown” and it would be the introduction of real conditions in GW2.

It would create an armor which has a risk which is higher even then Zerk! Just to create some understanding.

Creating a condition damage offensive set? You mean sinister? Done.

Who would have guessed that a high ramp-up time damage tool would get shifted out of a speedclear meta.

Sinister is a Hybrid set, not a strict conditions one. But I like it anyways, It’s a set which allows for offensive play with conditions. And coupled with a might stacking build it’s just interesting IMHO…

My warrior has 2126 power and 1281 Condition damage with a 59% base critical chance base, running Rampagers weapons and Sinister Armor and Trinkets (Asc), Only missing trinkets is still rampager. (Build 2/6/0/4/2)

with selfstacked might (15-20 stacks), Full Bloodlust, Banner of Strength, Empower Allies & Fury and Super Veggie pizza and Toxic sharpening stones it ends up with 3671 power and 2396 condi dmg and 60% condi duration and a 89% crit chance: allowing (also during burst: 99% crit (Flurry))

25 bleed doing 4058 dmg/tick (base length, Sw1:12+sec,sw5 19+sec, LB5 19+sec)
burning doing 927 tick (Base length LB F1: 3+/6+/9+ secs, LB2 3x 1 sec)
5 torment doing 609(not moving) 1217 (moving)/tick (Base length: sw4: 8+sec )
for total (if all up): 5543(not moving) 6152 condition (moving) c .dmg/tick
(like I wrote duration can be lengthened by 50-60% with food in 2 clicks.)

Oh and sword auto crits for ~2700 with those amounts of buff
Final trust can hit 8-10k when under 50% health… at way less buff…

Some practical problems show you seldomly get to this amount of damage, and it’s very dependant on your might levels.

Only problem is you cannot use it very well in Warrior dungeon parties, If DPS section is Guardian, it works perfect though, combines well with thief and ele as well.

It also shows the problems with minor traits giving bleed on crit. as they will suck quite some damage away… if other people run them with empty conditions.

IF the BLEED on crit would be removed from arms adept minor, or justy be swapped to arms grandmaster minor it would solve a lot of problems. At least for warriors wanting to use conditions…

I also have an rabid set, If I can get by with less power but need some toughness you can replace some parts of the armor with rabid af course and select your tankyness..

L Step.8659:

and their damage passively ticks so they don’t always need to land something.

If they don’t land something, they don’t tick. Funny, that’s the same as with Power builds.

What’s ticking isn’t their latest attacks, it’s what they already hit you with. Just like the damage you’ve already taken isn’t affected by future events.

This is something that just does not concern me much. We have multiple character slots so I can have zerker and condi toons. I love my necro. However I realized long ago that it was never going to be able to do some things. So I built other characters to fill that void.

You just cant turn condition cap loose. It would be a meltdown of epic proportions. Condition builds would be the new meta overnight. Its a tricky, slippery slope. However it is easily worked around by having different characters for different jobs. Its just not that hard to have at least two 80s designed for different things in a very short time even for an extremely casual player.