Guild Wars 2

..:::Preface:::..
I’ve made threads along these lines before but I think they’ve largely been missed because I post them in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I’ll mainly be advocating how to encourage Condition damage builds and Support builds by removing the two primary barriers that hold them back.

If you need a TL:DR a conclusion will be posted below with a solution summary although I would recommend reading through the post if this subject interests you at all. I’ve done the best I can to make it relevant and easy to read.

..:::Intro:::..
So with the new blog post I’m sure people will be buzzing about the Crit damage nerf and their proposed reasoning of improving build diversity… except it really won’t have this effect.

Maximizing damage output will still be the way to play and this is true largely due to two reasons.

1. Time gated events.
– World bosses and the like.
– Some new world events like the poison sprout events are time gated as well.

2. Objects
– Are ubiquitous with every aspect of GW2 gameplay.
—- WvW Gates
—- Dungeon markers
—- Event markers [as we saw in the Marionette for example]
—- Player turrets

More often than not, time is of the essence in this game and it is being utilized more and more as a significant factor in game-play.

Unfortunately this means that players are going to be forced to play in the most optimal way to combat this restriction as it is the singular greatest threat to group success and enjoyment by far.

So maximizing damage is the name of the game. That’s simple enough and it’s a fact that’s been well understood since shortly after the game was released.

The best way to maximize damage is clearly Berserker gear that maximizes Power, Precision and Critical Damage [now Ferocity] and Condition damage, the only indirect way to cause damage in GW2 has earned a bad rep for being a significantly weaker approach.

Now, conditions can be quite a strong way to play, if you’re soloing. I found this personally and a lot of it has to do with the fact that you only have one stat to worry about for increasing your overall output [Condi damage] vs 3 [Power, Precision, Critical Damage] and this allows you to focus on other stats for survivability or utility.

That last bit is particularly important here. Builds primarily rely on a 3-stat format. Seeing as pure damage output relies on using all 3 stats for that purpose you are limited in your utility everywhere else and sacrificing any of those three stats compromises your build.

By freeing up 2 of those stats, condition damage builds end up opening up a huge variety of options for players to explore!

For this reason I think continuing to find ways to discourage Crit builds is a mistake and we should instead be encouraging Condition builds and Support builds.

How do we do this?

Well those two points addressed above are our primary targets. They are the biggest factors deterring exploration of Condition and support builds in PvE primarily and there are a variety of ways we can address them.

The first thing we should look at is…

..:::Time gated events:::..

With this feature becoming more prevalent we need to find a way to bring more builds to the fold else run the risk of alienating all other forms of play that don’t involve dishing out maximum critical damage moving forward.

Primarily time gated events are world bosses, or for our purposes, a single target protected by objects… A condition build’s worst nightmare.

Furthermore, because condition stacks are capped your personal effectiveness is almost always robbed and you’re reduced to a crippled version of a power build. Condition builds are the only builds that exist in this game that actually have their effectiveness reduced when playing with other people!

The reality is every class and every build dishes out conditions whether they want to or not and so long as conditions are capped at 25 per target, with 50+ people targeting one enemy it’s pretty much guaranteed that you won’t be applying any of your conditions to the fight.

A few simple solutions that jump out are to simply increase the condition caps based on enemy rank [player, normal, veteran, elites etc…], remove the condition cap entirely or calculate conditions on a player by player basis.

I think the last of those three is the least practical despite it being the clear winner in making individual players more effective regardless of build type and removing the condition cap entirely would prove overpowered for lower tier enemies such as veterans and elites in dungeons.

Of these I feel the first option, increasing stat caps based on unit rank would be the most effective and easiest to both implement and balance moving forward.

For those who are visual this is what I mean;
Numbers are just hypothetical for demonstrative purposes, not my actual proposal

Player —-——————- No change to condition cap
Normal —-—————- No change to condition cap
Veteran —-————— No change to condition cap
Elite —-—————- 50 bleed cap —- 5 poison damage cap —- 3 burning cap
Champion —-———- 75 bleed cap —- 10 poison damage cap —- 5 burning cap
Legendary —-———— 150 bleed cap —- 25 poison damage cap —- 10 burning cap —-

In order to justify this we need to look at the numbers.

I’m going to go based on my own experience with my ranger zerker build, which is arguably on the low end of zerker output because I’m familiar with the numbers and capabilities of the class.

If you’re familiar with another class’ damage output please post below with your general numbers! I think it would be helpful to put this whole argument into perspective as I simply can’t comment effectively on other classes.

In a world boss scenario my pet is pretty much useless, getting a few hits in before dying. No matter how it’s controlled I’m pretty much guaranteed to have my DPS reduced when it inevitably takes a nap.

On a longbow shot I crit roughly 2 out of every 3 shots and hit for about 4.5k normally.
It’s okay but not great, many can certainly do better.
Against a dragon that gets tripled however as, with the right angle and piercing arrows trait, I can hit every hit box, so I do about 12k average dps vs a dragon.

Now we can take off 10% with the new update roughly and I’m still sitting pretty over 10k dps vs a world boss with multiple hit boxes or just under 4k dps for a single hit box.

In order to justify keeping condition damage limited we have to show that it can regularly surpass this at the very least.

To make it easier on my brain I jumped over to http://gw2.hazno.net/ to get the calculations quickly and painlessly.

At level 80 with 1500 condition damage [the high end of the stat disregarding consumables]
Bleeding causes 118 per second per stack
Burning causes 703 per second
Confusion causes 178 damage per tick per stack [based on skill use]
Poison causes 230 damage per second
Torment causes 88 per second per stack [double if victim is moving]

As a Ranger, on the condition build that I ran for a good 6 months post release, I could maintain 22 stacks of bleeding with max gear and maintain poison. That was about it for damage causing conditions.

This meant I was dealing about 2700 dps from conditions after all my stacks were maxed and this was only guaranteed so long as I was running solo.

Otherwise my shortbow shots were striking for 400 damage max and my pet had no stats increased, so their effectiveness was limited to the utility they brought, namely snares and controls.

1v1 this was beastly. I could solo champions no problem and it felt great as I was mobile, tough and it felt like a more tactical fight trying to maintain my dots while staying alive. It took some time but felt more rewarding.

Once I got into group play however it didn’t pay its dues. My effectiveness was shot in dungeons and virtually non-existent in massive groups. It simply wasn’t worth playing this way if I wanted to be social.

Even looking at the damage, pure damage is still the way to go and holds a clear advantage over pure condition damage even if my full utility was guaranteed. There is really no way for me to outperform a zerker build with a condition build as a ranger. Period.

That being said, my experience is anecdotal at best. Let’s get some more compelling numbers here.

Let’s say a hypothetical build could maintain all conditions with max condition damage.

With 25 ticks of bleeding, poison, burning and 25 ticks of torment [let’s say our victim is standing still] this build would be able to dish out 6083dps disregarding confusion! That jumps up to 8283dps if our victim is foolish enough to run away!

That’s awesome! I wouldn’t mind that at all!

Let me put this another way though.
That’s the total combined maximum condition based damage per second a world boss takes… Normally it’s much lower because people are automatically causing conditions that don’t have condition damage. This is a huge problem.

Looking at these numbers I feel increasing the condition damage caps is not only justified but necessary to promote and drastically increase build diversity.

That is only half the story though and this next point was driven home by the marionette event…

..:::Destructible Objects:::..

When I talk about objects, for anyone confused, I mean any yellow highlighted objects like turrets, walls, doors, generators and other miscellaneous things used for events, dungeon triggers and abilities.

For this subject I’m going to be a bit more blunt.

In any situation where an object has to be destroyed, condition builds are absolutely useless.

I’m not sure if object health scales but if it does then players running condition builds can even drag their group down when an object’s destruction is paramount.

As I said earlier I used to run a condition build in PvE for the longest time. I enjoyed the utility skills that ran with it and was a very effective build for soloing. In doing so I’ve come across many situations where I was the guy who couldn’t take down an object to save my life or, more importantly, my teams.

This happened a few times for a few unfortunate players that I ran with in the Marionette event where, when we entered our platform, everyone succeeded except for their platform and with them being the only surviving member on their platform, even with 15 to 20 seconds on the clock, they were only able to take out a maximum of 10% of the object’s health.

It was embarrassing for them and infuriating for most of the other players. There’s simply no good way to spin it.

My proposed solution is simple.

Don’t give destructible objects health like mobs and, instead, use a hit counter so that every strike against the object is of equal value.

This way, objects can be better balanced to their value and can be given simple hit counters like 50 or 100 or 200 – whatever was necessary for balance.

Every class has a way of dealing out hits rapid fire or relatively quickly regardless of what build is being run, whether it is condi or zerker or heal or whatever.
Some classes will excel in this but that isn’t any different from the way it is now realistically and it still has the added benefit of leveling the playing field across all play styles.

Admittedly this would require work on A.net’s side as a balance pass would need to happen across all objects. Fortunately there are ways to expedite that process so I don’t feel it is unreasonable to propose.

A few other solutions came up in that discussion before.

One that I really liked being to calculate all object damage around base skill damage with no modifiers. That way it doesn’t matter if you’re running DPS or support or otherwise, you’ll still be just as effective as the next guy at dropping that gate/turret/etc…

This method would still require a balance patch but may be easier as it might be accomplished with a %global reduction method with minor tweaks. So it might be a slightly simpler solution to implement.

..:::Conclusion:::..

It’s no secret that condition builds have been less than desirable for the entirety of GW2 in PvE.

The two most significant hurdles are their inability to contribute in group events and the insurmountable nature of destructible objects ubiquitous in every part of the game.

My proposed solutions to both are:
Increase condition stack caps based on enemy rank;
Player —-———- No change
Normal —-——- No change
Veteran —-—— No change
Elite —-——- 50 bleeding —- 10 poison intensity
Champion —-— 100 bleeding —- 25 poison intensity —- 10 burning intensity
Legendary —-—- Remove bleeding and torment caps —- 50 poison intensity —- 25 burning intensity —- 50 vulnerability

and

Don’t give destructible objects health like mobs and, instead, use a hit counter so that every strike against the object is of equal value.

By increasing their viability it opens up doors for player experimentation and opens more avenues for build diversity to evolve naturally.

For anyone who has taken the time to read through everything THANK YOU! You’re awesome!

Please share your thoughts if you disagree with anything I’ve said. I feel this is a discussion worth having for the health of the game.

Also, please post your numbers if you are running max or close to max zerker gear for other classes! I couldn’t comment on them but I feel they would help put the state of their necessity into perspective.

Cheers! See you online.

Eh, I think that the existing stack mechanics work for technical reasons as well as design reasons, so I don’t think it would be possible for them to manage 100 stacks even if they thought it was a good idea.

I think the solution is to use a “stack overflow” system, in which whenever a bleed stack hits 25, or a Poison stack goes over 30 seconds, any subsequent stacks of that effect are converted into direct damage. So like if a player’s attack causes three bleed stacks, each of which would do 500 damage over its duration, and the enemy is at 24 stacks when he makes the attack, then one additional stack is applied, and then 1000 damage is dealt instantly to the target.

There’s little chance of smaller scale mobs taking on more than 25 stacks of Bleed, and if they do they deserve to explode anyways.

If one Warrior using Hundred Blades can do 20K damage, then ten Warriors would do 200K, there’s no reason why if one Condi Necro can deal 5K with a few bleed stacks, that ten Condi Necros shouldn’t be able to deal 50K.

I also think the simple solution to objects is to just allow Conditions to effect objects. The Poisons would corrode, the Bleeds would crumple, the Burns would. . . burn, they’d just deal damage as normally.

Btw, one issue I hadn’t been thinking about until your post, is the “tagging” problem, that in zerg vs. zerg encounters, you need to deal a certain amount of damage to get credit, and since Power deals damage more quickly they are more likely to reach this threshold in situations where enemies die quickly, making it harder for Condi builds to keep up. A solution, I think, would be to allow “potential” damage to count towards credit. So like if a Condi applies Bleeds that would deal 100dps for ten seconds, but the enemy dies within two, then only 200 damage would currently be counted, but with this change, it would mean that the full 1000 damage would be considered for credit.

Ohoni.6057:

Eh, I think that the existing stack mechanics work for technical reasons as well as design reasons, so I don’t think it would be possible for them to manage 100 stacks even if they thought it was a good idea.

This is a good point. I hadn’t considered the technical processing hurdles.

On that note do you know if condition stacking handled by the client or the user? My feeling is that depending on which one it is the dev team would have some options to handle that kind of a change.

At the same time I’m not sure if this is really an issue seeing as the system already is able to track and display tons of conditions. Between the variety of conditions and their different stacking natures there’s already a fair amount for the system to process and it seems to do it without much trouble, although it’s hard to say from our end just how much of a tax it is without seeing the numbers on the developers side.

Ohoni.6057:

I think the solution is to use a “stack overflow” system, in which whenever a bleed stack hits 25, or a Poison stack goes over 30 seconds, any subsequent stacks of that effect are converted into direct damage. So like if a player’s attack causes three bleed stacks, each of which would do 500 damage over its duration, and the enemy is at 24 stacks when he makes the attack, then one additional stack is applied, and then 1000 damage is dealt instantly to the target.

I’ve seen others propose this as well but the solution just doesn’t sit well with me.
I feel like the overflow mechanic would tax the system more than simply raising the condition caps as it would inject an independent calculation into a the combat system that isn’t particularly easy to explain and might not even be easy to process in large scenarios.

Ohoni.6057:

There’s little chance of smaller scale mobs taking on more than 25 stacks of Bleed, and if they do they deserve to explode anyways.

Small scale mobs wouldn’t be effected by the change I propose. Condition caps would remain at their current levels until we look at Elite mobs and higher.

Ohoni.6057:

If one Warrior using Hundred Blades can do 20K damage, then ten Warriors would do 200K, there’s no reason why if one Condi Necro can deal 5K with a few bleed stacks, that ten Condi Necros shouldn’t be able to deal 50K.

Agreed!

Ohoni.6057:

I also think the simple solution to objects is to just allow Conditions to effect objects. The Poisons would corrode, the Bleeds would crumple, the Burns would. . . burn, they’d just deal damage as normally.

Also a good solution.

I think I disagreed with the idea a while ago but it honestly does make sense. My only gripe is in party scenarios where people still add arbitrary stacks of conditions that hinder a pure condition player’s effectiveness where a “hit counter health system” or “base skill damage system” would alleviate this problem.

Ohoni.6057:

Btw, one issue I hadn’t been thinking about until your post, is the “tagging” problem, that in zerg vs. zerg encounters, you need to deal a certain amount of damage to get credit, and since Power deals damage more quickly they are more likely to reach this threshold in situations where enemies die quickly, making it harder for Condi builds to keep up. A solution, I think, would be to allow “potential” damage to count towards credit. So like if a Condi applies Bleeds that would deal 100dps for ten seconds, but the enemy dies within two, then only 200 damage would currently be counted, but with this change, it would mean that the full 1000 damage would be considered for credit.

This is a good point I hadn’t considered either. I remember I didn’t have much of an issue with this when the game was released as I think they calculated it based on how many times you hit a mob.

For my shortbow ranger this wasn’t an issue as I just used piercing arrows and watched my attack angle. I think they changed it to a damage counter like you say somewhere along the way but I can’t say for sure whether they have or not…

If that’s the case I feel the simplest solution would simply be to revert back to the old tagging method of counting the number of hits against a target as it seems like the best indication of a players investment in downing a target imo.

If that’s the case I feel the simplest solution would simply be to revert back to the old tagging method of counting the number of hits against a target as it seems like the best indication of a players investment in downing a target imo.

Maybe, but that would be imperfect too, since as you say SB Rangers can spam 1 all day and rack up a ton of hits, while other classes have slower hitting attacks, maybe averaging one hit per second or less. The system needs to take both into account.

Ohoni.6057:

If one Warrior using Hundred Blades can do 20K damage, then ten Warriors would do 200K, there’s no reason why if one Condi Necro can deal 5K with a few bleed stacks, that ten Condi Necros shouldn’t be able to deal 50K.

erm a fully group buffed warrior with appropriate gear makes 20k dmg allone with its last hit on 100b…so one fully landed 100b that hits 5 times its more 40-50k dmg per warrior, makes 400-500k dmg on 10 warriors within 2 seconds.

My main is an ele, but playing my warrior is just steamrolling through everything – and if I’m doing 50k dmg or now with the -10% dmg decrease still 45k dmg really doesn’t matter. Still steamrolling.

Only and easiest way I see to reduce the dominance of berserker: make mobs (esp. bosses ofc) hit less hard (so not one- or twoshotting), but way more frequently, so that vitality and toughness gain more importance. But then there is also that huge basic health pool of warriors….

Mondo.5029:

(…)
So with the new blog post I’m sure people will be buzzing about the Crit damage nerf and their proposed reasoning of improving build diversity… except it really won’t have this effect.

Maximizing damage output will still be the way to play and this is true largely due to two reasons.

1. Time gated events.
– World bosses and the like.
– Some new world events like the poison sprout events are time gated as well.

(…)

More often than not, time is of the essence in this game and it is being utilized more and more as a significant factor in game-play.

Unfortunately this means that players are going to be forced to play in the most optimal way to combat this restriction as it is the singular greatest threat to group success and enjoyment by far.

So maximizing damage is the name of the game. That’s simple enough and it’s a fact that’s been well understood since shortly after the game was released.

The best way to maximize damage is clearly Berserker gear that maximizes Power, Precision and Critical Damage [now Ferocity] and Condition damage, the only indirect way to cause damage in GW2 has earned a bad rep for being a significantly weaker approach.

Right now the problem is over the top damage, there’s no point on trying to make it look like anything else, players are (were) dealing too much damage.

Anyone trying to do anything else just looks silly and was quite frankly absolutely useless.

I cannot stress this enough, that’s the reality, trying to make it look like anything else is just making excuses, full damage was always OP in GW2 from the start, the rest of your post then is just trying to shift focus from the problem, yes condi damage needs to be fixed, but so did crit damage, not to mention not every profession can go for condi damage and the problem would remain.

So the solution was either boost the HP, which would almost make zerker required and everything else even wrost, or cut back on the damage which is what was done.
Too much damage output was always the problem period.

Alternatively we could get more content like Teq that can’t be crit so we can have all the zerkers dead on the ground and crying for nerfs.

This reminds me, a week or so ago I read a post here of someone saying “with this change we’ll be less willing to run dungeons with people not in zerker”.
I have a sneaky suspicious pretty soon that kinda player is gonna be asking for tank/healer in the LFG…

Dean Calaway.9718:

Mondo.5029:

(…)
So with the new blog post I’m sure people will be buzzing about the Crit damage nerf and their proposed reasoning of improving build diversity… except it really won’t have this effect.

Maximizing damage output will still be the way to play and this is true largely due to two reasons.

1. Time gated events.
– World bosses and the like.
– Some new world events like the poison sprout events are time gated as well.

(…)

More often than not, time is of the essence in this game and it is being utilized more and more as a significant factor in game-play.

Unfortunately this means that players are going to be forced to play in the most optimal way to combat this restriction as it is the singular greatest threat to group success and enjoyment by far.

So maximizing damage is the name of the game. That’s simple enough and it’s a fact that’s been well understood since shortly after the game was released.

The best way to maximize damage is clearly Berserker gear that maximizes Power, Precision and Critical Damage [now Ferocity] and Condition damage, the only indirect way to cause damage in GW2 has earned a bad rep for being a significantly weaker approach.

Right now the problem is over the top damage, there’s no point on trying to make it look like anything else, players are (were) dealing too much damage.

Anyone trying to do anything else just looks silly and was quite frankly absolutely useless.

I cannot stress this enough, that’s the reality, trying to make it look like anything else is just making excuses, full damage was always OP in GW2 from the start, the rest of your post then is just trying to shift focus from the problem, yes condi damage needs to be fixed, but so did crit damage, not to mention not every profession can go for condi damage and the problem would remain.

So the solution was either boost the HP, which would almost make zerker required and everything else even wrost, or cut back on the damage which is what was done.
Too much damage output was always the problem period.

Alternatively we could get more content like Teq that can’t be crit so we can have all the zerkers dead on the ground and crying for nerfs.

This reminds me, a week or so ago I read a post here of someone saying “with this change we’ll be less willing to run dungeons with people not in zerker”.
I have a sneaky suspicious pretty soon that kinda player is gonna be asking for tank/healer in the LFG…

it will be the other way around. more gearchecks. more players will be kicked for not using berserker. more cryhards when they realise this patch did absolutely nothing and made it even worse.

also, as long as the active combat system exists, there will be no reason to use defensive gear (when you are good enough).

Dean Calaway.9718:

NoTrigger.8396:

it will be the other way around. more gearchecks. more players will be kicked for not using berserker. more cryhards when they realise this patch did absolutely nothing and made it even worse.

also, as long as the active combat system exists, there will be no reason to use defensive gear (when you are good enough).

I beg to differ, as is most zerkers aren’t nearly as good as they think they are, they get away with it because damage was OP.
Now you’ll get failed runs and people pointing fingers wondering who’s not in zerker not realizing that they are all in zerker and the problem is they can’t survive, while a party with someone defensive to pick zerkers from the floor is actually gonna be able to finish.

If I had a gold for every time I rezed someone with the twilight I could afford the stupid thing and never use it.

wrong. bad players get away with berserker gear because the content is old and stale. even the worst player will run trough the content without a lot of trouble after nearly 2 years of practice.

the “it works because monsters die so fast they cant deal damage to you” is actually the biggest bs ive ever heard.

lets take a full berserker PuG for example. they use suboptimal traits, bad dps rotations, bad ultities. they dont have perma 25 might, they dont have perma 25 vulnerability, they dont know what fury is. they use banner of tactics instead of strength and discipline.

they dont kill bosses fast enough. not even the best players and pve guilds do.
you do not kill bosses fast enough before they have the opportunity to kill you.

another example. lupicus.
if berserker damage was op, how the kitten am i able to solo lupicus naked then?
because it takes me 16 minutes and my damage is so op?
so op i can kill him so fast he doesnt even have a chance to touch me, right?

and its strange that in pugs, i am the berserker player who ends up soloing lupicus and picking up the defensive gear players.

NoTrigger.8396:

it will be the other way around. more gearchecks. more players will be kicked for not using berserker. more cryhards when they realise this patch did absolutely nothing and made it even worse.

also, as long as the active combat system exists, there will be no reason to use defensive gear (when you are good enough).

I beg to differ, as is most zerkers aren’t nearly as good as they think they are, they get away with it because damage was OP.
Now you’ll get failed runs and people pointing fingers wondering who’s not in zerker not realizing that they are all in zerker and the problem is they can’t survive, while a party with someone defensive to pick zerkers from the floor is actually gonna be able to finish.

If I had a gold for every time I rezed someone with the twilight I could afford the stupid thing and never use it.

Dean Calaway.9718:

NoTrigger.8396:

it will be the other way around. more gearchecks. more players will be kicked for not using berserker. more cryhards when they realise this patch did absolutely nothing and made it even worse.

also, as long as the active combat system exists, there will be no reason to use defensive gear (when you are good enough).

I beg to differ, as is most zerkers aren’t nearly as good as they think they are, they get away with it because damage was OP.
Now you’ll get failed runs and people pointing fingers wondering who’s not in zerker not realizing that they are all in zerker and the problem is they can’t survive, while a party with someone defensive to pick zerkers from the floor is actually gonna be able to finish.

If I had a gold for every time I rezed someone with the twilight I could afford the stupid thing and never use it.

Uhhhh what?!?! That is like saying players who face tank using PTV are good just because they don’t go down. Doesn’t make sense

Damage isn’t OP the reason why you run zerker is because most of the other stats in a PvE dungeon aren’t that useful. On top of that good zerker players can use zerker stat well because they actually know the mechanics and the game itself. Even without full might stack a lot of the dungeon strats can be done with a full zerker party if people just know when and how to dodge and what the boss mechanics are.

I rather have a player with zerker willing to learn and go down rather than someone with PTV. I mean how does a PTV player in dungeons learn to player better? They don’t really. While a full zerker player has to play better because if they miss a dodge or miss a feedback or aegis they literally die.

Dean Calaway.9718:

NoTrigger.8396:

it will be the other way around. more gearchecks. more players will be kicked for not using berserker. more cryhards when they realise this patch did absolutely nothing and made it even worse.

also, as long as the active combat system exists, there will be no reason to use defensive gear (when you are good enough).

I beg to differ, as is most zerkers aren’t nearly as good as they think they are, they get away with it because damage was OP.
Now you’ll get failed runs and people pointing fingers wondering who’s not in zerker not realizing that they are all in zerker and the problem is they can’t survive, while a party with someone defensive to pick zerkers from the floor is actually gonna be able to finish.

If I had a gold for every time I rezed someone with the twilight I could afford the stupid thing and never use it.

Considering you “had to rez” people I’m assuming you’re not in zerk? If so I doubt you ever ran with good zerk players as they all gearcheck and kick you.

As for “not getting away with it”, please. as if those extra 5 seconds to kill a boss will make a difference.

As for the OP, a lot of nice ideas. Atm I would’ve been glad if rampager got boosted up to zerk DPS in PvE at least, that way people can choose between direct or dot damage and both would be just as optimal.

erm a fully group buffed warrior with appropriate gear makes 20k dmg allone with its last hit on 100b…so one fully landed 100b that hits 5 times its more 40-50k dmg per warrior, makes 400-500k dmg on 10 warriors within 2 seconds.

Actually, that’s not how Hundred Blades works. If you are dealing damage fast enough the numbers start to stack up, so when a Hundred Blades says “20K” on the last hit, that doesn’t mean that the last hit did 20K, it means that the entire chain did 20K in total. They deal a LOT of damage, yeah, but not as much as you imply. Or, if they do, I’ve got something seriously broken with mine.

Dean Calaway.9718:

This reminds me, a week or so ago I read a post here of someone saying “with this change we’ll be less willing to run dungeons with people not in zerker”.
I have a sneaky suspicious pretty soon that kinda player is gonna be asking for tank/healer in the LFG…

No, zerker groups will just take maybe 5-6% longer for runs (sigil changes will probably add some DPS). Or even less change, because some part of dungeon time is spent out of combat.The game hasn’t fundamentally changed, though I like the sigil improvements.

You seem to believe that zerkers need to kill fast or die. This is only true for players that execute poorly, good zerkers can avoid getting hit too much (and one must, to keep the awesome 10% scholar bonus, and stacks…).

Mondo.5029:

There is really no way for me to outperform a zerker build with a condition build as a ranger. Period.

You make some good points about condition damage and destructible objects, but I don’t agree with your premise, that condition builds should have damage parity with full zerker.

Two points:

1. The gear/stat system doesn’t support such a change. All of the gear sets with condition damage have defensive stats, except for Rampager (hybrid offense set). Dire lets you be as tanky as Soldier’s, while getting max condition damage. Condition damage only requires 1 stat (maybe some precision for certain builds).

Zerker damage on the other hand requires total stat investment in 3 separate offensive stats, you must go all-in offense to hit the direct damage ceiling.

2. Condition skills are also generally less risky than direct damage skills. For example, a zerker will probably be in melee range for PvE, while a condition necro can safely smack things with a scepter from 900 range, or use 1200 range AOE marks and such.

If you made condition damage equal to full glass cannon damage, then you’d have a lot of tanky, ranged builds doing glass cannon damage. The game would not be balanced at all.

I think the developers said the existing condition stack limits were from technical limitations on the server side.

the correct answer is to make the whole game use spvp style gear… skin, rune/sigil, fin. no more, no less, this would put everyone 100% equal, and anet would just have to rebalance pve for the sudden lack of stats…

Or they could make toughness actually effective against the things that currently make toughness useless (elite mobs and 1 shots from anything in existance)

1. The gear/stat system doesn’t support such a change. All of the gear sets with condition damage have defensive stats, except for Rampager (hybrid offense set). Dire lets you be as tanky as Soldier’s, while getting max condition damage. Condition damage only requires 1 stat (maybe some precision for certain builds).

True, a character in Dire should not do quite as much damage as a character in Zerkers, but a character in Dire should do as much damage as a character in Soldiers, and this is not currently the case in large scale events for the reasons listed above.

I would love to see a “Condi-Zerkers” set though that was Condition Damage/Condition Duration/Power, which should be equal in total DPS to a Zerker build, with a similar reduction in defense. There’s no point to it at the moment though, until they fix Condi damage in general.

And yes, Condition damage is only one stat, but it is only one stat, it should be equivalent to pure power, the crit chance and damage is a bonus on top of that.

2. Condition skills are also generally less risky than direct damage skills. For example, a zerker will probably be in melee range for PvE, while a condition necro can safely smack things with a scepter from 900 range, or use 1200 range AOE marks and such.

This is a silly argument. There are ranged Condi attacks, but there are ranged Direct attacks too, and melee versions of both as well. I can run my SB Thief, but I can also run my DD Thief, just as a Warrior can run GS or Rifle. Also, Necro staff marks are fairly meh for a Condi build. All in all, Condis run no less risky than direct damage. Yes, you can theoretically apply conditions and then move away, but your conditions can also be cleared, which is the trade-off there.

If a Power type launches a 2000 damage attack against an enemy with 2000 HP, then it hits instantly and the situation is over. If a Condi launches a 2000 damage attack over 10 seconds, then 1. that opponent will still be alive to fight back for those ten seconds, 2. he can heal up to recover some of the damage, 3. he can potentially clear the condition, negating a portion of the damage. That uncertainty and delay is the price Condis pay, and should pay for the most part, but in return they should be doing at least as much damage when things work out.

There are no condi builds that are truly “fire and forget”, where you can just drop a massive amount of conditions on an enemy in a second and then get out of there and he’ll definitely die. A real Condi build involves constantly applying and re-applying conditions, being just as engaged in the fight from start to finish as a Power build. There is no less risk involved.

voidwater.2064:

Mondo.5029:

There is really no way for me to outperform a zerker build with a condition build as a ranger. Period.

You make some good points about condition damage and destructible objects, but I don’t agree with your premise, that condition builds should have damage parity with full zerker.

My premise was never that condition builds or damage should have parity with full zerker builds. I merely brought up that example to illustrate, even without a cap, it is a virtual impossibility for a condition build to have parity and that is why it isn’t used in PvE, especially in group settings.

My personal feeling is that condition damage should be a bit stronger so it is a bit closer to equal output but a full damage spec should always have the advantage and it should be felt. These are my feelings though and that still isn’t what I advocate in my post.

Primarily this has to do with removing the hurdles that prevent players from experimenting with build diversity and having ones effectiveness robbed so blatantly throughout the game is a big one.

voidwater.2064:

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I think the developers said the existing condition stack limits were from technical limitations on the server side.

I’m coming to understand this a bit more. A few people have brought it up and it does make sense. I am still critical of this as it just seems like poor programming when these hurdles consistently come up because too much is being handled by the client. Skill lag is another thing that comes to mind on this note.

I understand that a change like that would take drastic overhaul of the system and the payoff might seem small on the drawing board but I feel strongly that it’s something they need to seriously look at for the longevity of the game.

Treat the disease not the symptom as it were.

Dean Calaway.9718:

Right now the problem is over the top damage, there’s no point on trying to make it look like anything else, players are (were) dealing too much damage.
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I cannot stress this enough, that’s the reality, trying to make it look like anything else is just making excuses, full damage was always OP in GW2 from the start
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yes condi damage needs to be fixed, but so did crit damage…

I can’t disagree that Zerker damage is too high but the issue right now is that the game is already balanced around it. So lowering the damage beyond what they are already implementing runs the risk of breaking the game in a much more meaningful and harmful way.

Also, relying on reducing the effectiveness of Zerker builds still leaves the issues of condition damage untouched. So the ‘increase in build diversity’ is very shallow and relatively meaningless at that point, assuming it even has that effect.

The best way to approach it is to bring Zerker down slightly and only slightly, as the game still needs it, while bringing other build viability up significantly.

I know this is contradictory to my thread title but you make a good point.

I will say this, you cannot solve the problem with Zerker build prevalence by only addressing one aspect. In order for this to evolve in a meaningful way both the limitations of other builds and the effectiveness of Zerker builds have to be addressed simultaneously.