Guild Wars 2

Title. I want to know if I’ll be able to actually run a viable condition build at some point.

Thanks.

really just really what are you …….

TehPwnerer.7215:

Title. I want to know if I’ll be able to actually run a viable condition build at some point.

Thanks.

Conditions have always been viable. In fact, they’re incredibly powerful except in every aspect of the game outside of dungeons and zerg content. Are conditions ever going to be capable of 100k bursts? No. That flies in the face of DoT/attrition style play. Apples will never be the same as oranges.

Tman.6349:

TehPwnerer.7215:

Title. I want to know if I’ll be able to actually run a viable condition build at some point.

Thanks.

Conditions have always been viable. In fact, they’re incredibly powerful except in every aspect of the game outside of dungeons and zerg content. Are conditions ever going to be capable of 100k bursts? No. That flies in the face of DoT/attrition style play. Apples will never be the same as oranges.

The fact that my conditions, as a condition build, get overwritten as soon as someone auto attacks that has a condition is flawed. I can have +1000 condition damage and as soon as some zerker warrior with a rifle uses their auto attack, that 1000 damage bleed on the mob is now a 70 dmg bleed.

To say that conditions are fine in any content that isn’t solo is flat out wrong. Sorry.

“Anet, plz nerf ‘zerkers’ so other builds will be more viable (read: necessary) for the good of the community and diversity!”

*critical Damage gets nerfed by 8-14% depending on profession/build

“Haha ‘zerkers’! How you like them apples!?!”

*DPs specs continue on w/o batting an eye

“Anet, please make other builds viable (read: necessary)! I want to be a healer or a tank and be needed for group play!”

*Anet: “We couldn’t have been more clear that the Tank/Healer/DPS Trinity would not be a part of the Dynamic Combat system in GW2. We designed every profession to fulfill these roles individually without the need of outside influence.”

“Yeah, I realize your intentions/delivery….but….but, WoW and ‘roles’ and “trinity’ and ‘snowflakes’ and indoctrination and years of status quo !!!”

*Anet: “It appears that you don’t understand our intentions at all…”

TehPwnerer.7215:

Tman.6349:

TehPwnerer.7215:

Title. I want to know if I’ll be able to actually run a viable condition build at some point.

Thanks.

Conditions have always been viable. In fact, they’re incredibly powerful except in every aspect of the game outside of dungeons and zerg content. Are conditions ever going to be capable of 100k bursts? No. That flies in the face of DoT/attrition style play. Apples will never be the same as oranges.

The fact that my conditions, as a condition build, get overwritten as soon as someone auto attacks that has a condition is flawed. I can have +1000 condition damage and as soon as some zerker warrior with a rifle uses their auto attack, that 1000 damage bleed on the mob is now a 70 dmg bleed.

To say that conditions are fine in any content that isn’t solo is flat out wrong. Sorry.

I very specifically implied that they are not 100% efficient within group play. Mmkay? Berserkers aren’t very efficient against world crosses and structures. That is why we adapt in those scenarios. Perhaps you should take advantage of that same logic.

Tman.6349:

TehPwnerer.7215:

Tman.6349:

TehPwnerer.7215:

Title. I want to know if I’ll be able to actually run a viable condition build at some point.

Thanks.

Conditions have always been viable. In fact, they’re incredibly powerful except in every aspect of the game outside of dungeons and zerg content. Are conditions ever going to be capable of 100k bursts? No. That flies in the face of DoT/attrition style play. Apples will never be the same as oranges.

The fact that my conditions, as a condition build, get overwritten as soon as someone auto attacks that has a condition is flawed. I can have +1000 condition damage and as soon as some zerker warrior with a rifle uses their auto attack, that 1000 damage bleed on the mob is now a 70 dmg bleed.

To say that conditions are fine in any content that isn’t solo is flat out wrong. Sorry.

I very specifically implied that they are not 100% efficient within group play. Mmkay? Berserkers aren’t very efficient against world crosses and structures. That is why we adapt in those scenarios. Perhaps you should take advantage of that same logic.

It’s bad logic. An entire damage set shouldn’t be irrelevant in any scenario.

No, structures and world bosses shouldn’t be immune to crits and conditions.

No, condition builds shouldn’t blow in group play.

Do ‘viable’ and ‘optimal’ have the exact same definition? I Cleric’s D/D Ele camping water can complete the entire game. Maybe, even solo a good share of it. It is very viable. Is it optimal though? A Dire Warrior can solo most of the game, including many dungeon paths. It is very viable. Is it optimal for dungeon speedclears?

This debate has been responsible for many dead horses so I’ll just leave you to your own definition of logic.

*If you have the time, go ask some sPvPers and WvW Roamers about how utterly useless conditions are.

Tman.6349:

This debate has been responsible for many dead horses so I’ll just leave you to your own definition of logic.

*If you have the time, go ask some sPvPers and WvW Roamers about how utterly useless conditions are.

Conditions should have a place in zerg and dungeon content. I don’t think anyone is arguing conditions are bad in PvP.

The entire PvE design is flawed; if you’re not a might stacking zerker you’re doing it wrong; and that’s bad… mmmk.

Tman.6349:

“Anet, plz nerf ‘zerkers’ so other builds will be more viable (read: necessary) for the good of the community and diversity!”

*critical Damage gets nerfed by 8-14% depending on profession/build

“Haha ‘zerkers’! How you like them apples!?!”

*DPs specs continue on w/o batting an eye

Seriously, how many people are going to forget that Ferocity was stated as only the 1st step in the change(s) they planned on implementing to alleviate the sense of “killing things faster is the best support.” On the other hand, they did say they wanted to see how the change would play out before doing anything else so maybe they were satisfied with what they saw. It is hard to tell with these long balance cycles. But it is what it is. I wouldn’t bet on the zerker stats being meta forever is all I’m sayin’.

More on topic, the devs made it sound like condition stacking in its current form was primarily a financial decision with data costs and whatnot, although that’s probably not a complete picture of the design choices leading to what we have now. You can probably expect a change to it in the future. Keep in mind, we likely won’t hear about it until they actually have something that is financially feasible and won’t explode bosses faster than Fiery Rush.

And yeah, PVP balance has to be taken into account too. Another challenge but not an impass.

Malthurius.6870:

Tman.6349:

This debate has been responsible for many dead horses so I’ll just leave you to your own definition of logic.

*If you have the time, go ask some sPvPers and WvW Roamers about how utterly useless conditions are.

Conditions should have a place in zerg and dungeon content. I don’t think anyone is arguing conditions are bad in PvP.

The entire PvE design is flawed; if you’re not a might stacking zerker you’re doing it wrong; and that’s bad… mmmk.

The word you’re looking for is “suboptimally,” and unfortunately, there will always be a set of optimal builds for each scenario. But I’m sure ANet has the resources to devote to constantly re-balancing everything as power shifts around in a circle.

This is why a game that uses the same balancing for PvE and PvP (including WvW) shouldn’t be balanced around PvE at all.

PvE doesn’t need to be balanced, you are not fighting each other but a dumb AI which can be exploited with anything and even a group of full tank guards stacking retal will be able to win every fight at some point.

PvP on the other hand, is crucial. You are fighting each other, sometimes for real life prices even. Unless you split balancing, this should be your priority #1 for balancing. And in this case, conditions are fine, maybe even a little too fine.

Andred.1087:

The word you’re looking for is “suboptimally,” and unfortunately, there will always be a set of optimal builds for each scenario. But I’m sure ANet has the resources to devote to constantly re-balancing everything as power shifts around in a circle.

You misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting any kind of re-balancing; their entire philosophy on PvE encounters needs to change. There should be mechanics that support the use of conditions/stuns/defense/control/support, not “buff these things until they’re good enough” or “nerf zerkers until it won’t work”.

Mind you that’s still a lot of resources to dump into the game, but a lot more sensible than playing nerf/buff whack-a-mole with PvE balance.

they need to give more mobs, enemies in general I should say, a lot more toughness and less vitality to make condis more relevant. people will run more hybrid and condi builds

Well having a condition-mancer as a main I do feel that conditions aren’t equally effective in all parts of the game (mostly dungeons, right off the top of my head I’m thinking AC and the graveling mounds which can’t be conditioned). So some improvement can be made, but I don’t feel hampered in general open world pve, wvw or pvp (although I haven’t been pvp-ing in a while).

Malthurius.6870:

The entire PvE design is flawed; if you’re not a might stacking zerker you’re doing it wrong; and that’s bad… mmmk.

Guess I’ve been playing the game wrong for 2 years now, dang.

Malthurius.6870:

The entire PvE design is flawed; if you’re not a might stacking zerker you’re doing it wrong; and that’s bad… mmmk.

No one forces you to play that way, you can play full nomad in dungeons if you want and I couldn’t care less.

Draknar.5748:

Malthurius.6870:

The entire PvE design is flawed; if you’re not a might stacking zerker you’re doing it wrong; and that’s bad… mmmk.

Guess I’ve been playing the game wrong for 2 years now, dang.

If you’re fully reliant on condition bosses, please don’t come to world bosses. You’re literally doing nothing but scaling the boss. Please go play something else.

Tman.6349:

TehPwnerer.7215:

Title. I want to know if I’ll be able to actually run a viable condition build at some point.

Thanks.

Conditions have always been viable. In fact, they’re incredibly powerful except in every aspect of the game outside of dungeons and zerg content. Are conditions ever going to be capable of 100k bursts? No. That flies in the face of DoT/attrition style play. Apples will never be the same as oranges.

Not in open world boss fights mainly because anytime a new condition is added it cancels the previous one if the stack is maxed. And most of them are stack max 1. There’s been ample talk about how to fix it from conversions to a new stack of a higher tier of damage for fire and poison, to actually only allowing classes who are specced grandemaster into condition damage builds to do condition damage and rebuilding the skills so they don’t apply conditions unless one is in a condition build (so removing bleeds and poison etc from burst damage builds entirely).

So they have the solutions they just need to implement them.

Rukh.9287:

Draknar.5748:

Malthurius.6870:

The entire PvE design is flawed; if you’re not a might stacking zerker you’re doing it wrong; and that’s bad… mmmk.

Guess I’ve been playing the game wrong for 2 years now, dang.

If you’re fully reliant on condition bosses, please don’t come to world bosses. You’re literally doing nothing but scaling the boss. Please go play something else.

I don’t play a might stacking zerker is all I’m saying. I also don’t play a condition build.

Malthurius.6870:

Andred.1087:

The word you’re looking for is “suboptimally,” and unfortunately, there will always be a set of optimal builds for each scenario. But I’m sure ANet has the resources to devote to constantly re-balancing everything as power shifts around in a circle.

You misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting any kind of re-balancing; their entire philosophy on PvE encounters needs to change. There should be mechanics that support the use of conditions/stuns/defense/control/support, not “buff these things until they’re good enough” or “nerf zerkers until it won’t work”.

Mind you that’s still a lot of resources to dump into the game, but a lot more sensible than playing nerf/buff whack-a-mole with PvE balance.

That is kind of right I guess. It is definitely true that DPS is all that matters in PvE, and zerk is the best way to get DPS in PvE. Because of this, anything that is not zerk is suboptimal. Not wrong, but less than the most efficient. PvP allows for a wide range of builds because the scenarios you need to be prepared for vary with the builds of your opponents, whereas in PvE, the mobs are all stupid, and the only way ANet thought to balance them was let them have more health and do more damage.

PvE could use some work, but I think they’re probably not going to change the existing content too much. More likely they will continue to diverge from the typical PvE pattern like they have been by designing new mobs that require different strategies to fight.

There seems to be something about ice buckets that has become a meme to get donations for ALS which is a neuro degenerative condition.

TehPwnerer.7215:

The fact that my conditions, as a condition build, get overwritten as soon as someone auto attacks that has a condition is flawed. I can have +1000 condition damage and as soon as some zerker warrior with a rifle uses their auto attack, that 1000 damage bleed on the mob is now a 70 dmg bleed.

Uh, I don’t believe that’s true.
Greatest intensity is used first. Someone with low CD sets enemy on fire for 6 seconds, then someone with high CD also sets target on fire for 6 seconds 3 seconds later, the target takes the low damage for 3 seconds (when that is all it’s afflicted with), then the high damage for the 6 seconds, then the low damage finishes it’s last 3 seconds.
As for ones that stack intensity I believe it calculates your damages separately, just as it calculates the duration separately. Unsure about what happens when ones that stack intensity have full stacks though. Either way, I don’t think your scenario happens (unless that rifle auto attack is somehow inflicting 25 stacks).

winterchillz.2564:

Malthurius.6870:

The entire PvE design is flawed; if you’re not a might stacking zerker you’re doing it wrong; and that’s bad… mmmk.

No one forces you to play that way, you can play full nomad in dungeons if you want and I couldn’t care less.

And I don’t play that way, because it’s boring. When a certain playstyle is too universally accepted as the best, you start creating a community that refuses to group with anyone other than those who conform.

Zerker being the top dog in PvE is a small part of that problem. Skipping fights, stacking on bosses to avoid mechanics, ect. It’s hard to kick someone for not using Zerker gear because you can’t inspect player equipment, but I’d be lying if I was to say I’ve never been kicked for refusing to exploit/skip fights. Looking at stats and conditions vs direct damage is too narrow a view for a much larger problem.

Like I elaborated on before; the entire philosophy behind PvE content needs to change, not the balance of stats. Fights should demand some use of support/conditions/control and deny attempts to LoS enemies into corners. It isn’t fun, and it’s generally accepted as the right way to do things, so not doing fights a certain specific way is considered wrong among the majority of the player base.

For that exact reason; I only do dungeon/fractal content with pre-established friends; that’s not healthy for the social aspect of an MMO when you dread grouping with new people.

Draknar.5748:

Guess I’ve been playing the game wrong for 2 years now, dang.

Wrong according to most players who do dungeons or fractals. I don’t run zerkers, so I’m wrong too according to a large portion of the player base.

Tman.6349:

This debate has been responsible for many dead horses so I’ll just leave you to your own definition of logic.

*If you have the time, go ask some sPvPers and WvW Roamers about how utterly useless conditions are.

Oh good so conditions are only viable in PvP scenarios. Great. Too bad that’s not what this thread is about. I should not have to, as a condition damage character, lose ALL of my damage the second someone auto attacks and applies their own condition.

GW1, WoW, Archeage, hell, EVERY OTHER MMO OUT THERE, allows for each person to damage bosses individually.

I don’t see why it’s so difficult to allow everyone to just apply their own damage through conditions rather than having Joe level 50 over there use his rifle auto attack to apply a 20 damage bleed over my 150 damage bleed.

Rukh.9287:

Draknar.5748:

Malthurius.6870:

The entire PvE design is flawed; if you’re not a might stacking zerker you’re doing it wrong; and that’s bad… mmmk.

Guess I’ve been playing the game wrong for 2 years now, dang.

If you’re fully reliant on condition bosses, please don’t come to world bosses. You’re literally doing nothing but scaling the boss. Please go play something else.

This guy’s comment alone shows you how miserable the state of condition damage is in this game. Players like this who say “ZERKER OR GTFO MY WORLD BOSS” are clear indication something is wrong.

nightwulf.1986:

Tman.6349:

“Anet, plz nerf ‘zerkers’ so other builds will be more viable (read: necessary) for the good of the community and diversity!”

*critical Damage gets nerfed by 8-14% depending on profession/build

“Haha ‘zerkers’! How you like them apples!?!”

*DPs specs continue on w/o batting an eye

Seriously, how many people are going to forget that Ferocity was stated as only the 1st step in the change(s) they planned on implementing to alleviate the sense of “killing things faster is the best support.” On the other hand, they did say they wanted to see how the change would play out before doing anything else so maybe they were satisfied with what they saw. It is hard to tell with these long balance cycles. But it is what it is. I wouldn’t bet on the zerker stats being meta forever is all I’m sayin’.

More on topic, the devs made it sound like condition stacking in its current form was primarily a financial decision with data costs and whatnot, although that’s probably not a complete picture of the design choices leading to what we have now. You can probably expect a change to it in the future. Keep in mind, we likely won’t hear about it until they actually have something that is financially feasible and won’t explode bosses faster than Fiery Rush.

And yeah, PVP balance has to be taken into account too. Another challenge but not an impass.

On your last sentence: they can do what they did in GW1 and just make separate combat systems for PvE / PvP. I do agree something would need to be looked at for PvP as well, but the point being that PvE, WvW, PvP – doesn’t matter. Conditions are flat out broken.

tigirius.9014:

Tman.6349:

TehPwnerer.7215:

Title. I want to know if I’ll be able to actually run a viable condition build at some point.

Thanks.

Conditions have always been viable. In fact, they’re incredibly powerful except in every aspect of the game outside of dungeons and zerg content. Are conditions ever going to be capable of 100k bursts? No. That flies in the face of DoT/attrition style play. Apples will never be the same as oranges.

Not in open world boss fights mainly because anytime a new condition is added it cancels the previous one if the stack is maxed. And most of them are stack max 1. There’s been ample talk about how to fix it from conversions to a new stack of a higher tier of damage for fire and poison, to actually only allowing classes who are specced grandemaster into condition damage builds to do condition damage and rebuilding the skills so they don’t apply conditions unless one is in a condition build (so removing bleeds and poison etc from burst damage builds entirely).

So they have the solutions they just need to implement them.

Honestly, those are some great ideas. Being specced into grand master traits for conditions only to see someone auto attacking a world boss to get credit and applying bleed stacks with his rifle that overwrite mine is really irritating.

Tman.6349:

TehPwnerer.7215:

Title. I want to know if I’ll be able to actually run a viable condition build at some point.

Thanks.

Conditions have always been viable. In fact, they’re incredibly powerful except in every aspect of the game outside of dungeons and zerg content. Are conditions ever going to be capable of 100k bursts? No. That flies in the face of DoT/attrition style play. Apples will never be the same as oranges.

The problem with conditions is not that it can’t 100k burst, the problem is it doesn’t play well with others. 5 Bleeding rifle warriors can only stack 25 bleeds, doing around the same damage as 2 bleeding rifle warriors.

Rukh.9287:

Draknar.5748:

Malthurius.6870:

The entire PvE design is flawed; if you’re not a might stacking zerker you’re doing it wrong; and that’s bad… mmmk.

Guess I’ve been playing the game wrong for 2 years now, dang.

If you’re fully reliant on condition bosses, please don’t come to world bosses. You’re literally doing nothing but scaling the boss. Please go play something else.

I shall now bring my condi necro to every single world boss you do.

;3

Morsus.5106:

The problem with conditions is not that it can’t 100k burst, the problem is it doesn’t play well with others. 5 Bleeding rifle warriors can only stack 25 bleeds, doing around the same damage as 2 bleeding rifle warriors.

Exactly, this is a serious issue in the game because of the way conditions work, those 2 bleeding rifle warriors also negate the efforts of any other builds based on bleeds.

This has been an issue since day one and continues to be one of my bugbears because nothing has been done and it appears that Anet don’t consider it a problem.

The only place you CAN NOT successfully run a condition build is in Champ Trains and World Boss Zergs so if THOSE modes are the OPs issue keep in mind those are quite narrow (tho popular) game play modes.

Seems pretty obvious that ANet realizes WHAT is the issue but is unable to justify fixing those 2 modes at the expense of making Condition Damage builds OP in all other areas. If the OPs question is if they are still looking into what can be done (if anything), that’s a legit question (but I doubt he’s going to get an answer).

While I don’t disagree it’s an issue, there IS a solution…..don’t run Condition Builds for World Boss / Champ Train pursuits. Alternate equipment/Builds and Alt Characters ARE possible. Not saying this is a definitive long term solution but it is a viable option.

They are being looked at.

Tman.6349:

“Anet, plz nerf ‘zerkers’ so other builds will be more viable (read: necessary) for the good of the community and diversity!”

*critical Damage gets nerfed by 8-14% depending on profession/build

“Haha ‘zerkers’! How you like them apples!?!”

*DPs specs continue on w/o batting an eye

“Anet, please make other builds viable (read: necessary)! I want to be a healer or a tank and be needed for group play!”

*Anet: “We couldn’t have been more clear that the Tank/Healer/DPS Trinity would not be a part of the Dynamic Combat system in GW2. We designed every profession to fulfill these roles individually without the need of outside influence.”

“Yeah, I realize your intentions/delivery….but….but, WoW and ‘roles’ and “trinity’ and ‘snowflakes’ and indoctrination and years of status quo !!!”

*Anet: “It appears that you don’t understand our intentions at all…”

“But But…SNOWFLAKES!!!!!”

Brother Grimm.5176:

The only place you CAN NOT successfully run a condition build is in Champ Trains and World Boss Zergs so if THOSE modes are the OPs issue keep in mind those are quite narrow (tho popular) game play modes.

You cannot have more than two conditioners in any content because of the condition cap. See my above example. 2 Rifle Bleed Warrior can hit the bleed cap, and anyone else won’t really be doing any more damage, or worse, be lessening the damage because they aren’t geared/traited well and are stopping the dedicated conditioners from applying conditions.

You are exaggerating a bit (tho Bleed is more of an issue than other conditions, I agree).

Certainly the problem becomes untenable with 4 Condition Damage players (and has adverse effects at 3).

Still the only content that the player will overly suffer for is what I mentioned (as they will possibly denied rewards due to lack of damage). Otherwise, the player will still be “successful”, tho potentially not effective as they could be.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Still the only content that the player will overly suffer for is what I mentioned (as they will possibly denied rewards due to lack of damage). Otherwise, the player will still be “successful”, tho potentially not effective as they could be.

Play a dungeon with 5 bleed rifle warriors and then play it with 5 anything-other-than-condition warriors and tell me conditions are fine in group play. Burning and poison are in an even worse place because it can cap out at one person, due to it stacking duration. As soon as the enemy is perma burned/poisoned it doesn’t matter how many players you have, because you’ll still be doing the damage of the one or two people it takes to perma burn/poison. In solo content conditions are awesome, but as soon as you have more than two or so people you are at the limit for conditions.

Morsus.5106:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Still the only content that the player will overly suffer for is what I mentioned (as they will possibly denied rewards due to lack of damage). Otherwise, the player will still be “successful”, tho potentially not effective as they could be.

Play a dungeon with 5 bleed rifle warriors and then play it with 5 anything-other-than-condition warriors and tell me conditions are fine in group play. Burning and poison are in an even worse place because it can cap out at one person, due to it stacking duration. As soon as the enemy is perma burned/poisoned it doesn’t matter how many players you have, because you’ll still be doing the damage of the one or two people it takes to perma burn/poison. In solo content conditions are awesome, but as soon as you have more than two or so people you are at the limit for conditions.

I love these examples that demand build DIVERSITY, but then use silly examples like how FIVE condi rifle warriors will be ineffective. O.o Many people run conditions to solo dungeons. Those same rifle condi warriors can finish a dungeon just fine too. No they don’t play well together (WITHOUT variety lol), but it is viable to achieve the goal. As was said before, zerg content is the real problem where enemies are burned before enough damage can be applied to tag mobs. The impression that I’ve always got from these different arguments is “every other option should be equally capable of dungeon speed clears and welcome in those groups”. I really don’t understand this mentality of choosing sub-optimal builds for content and then going on a crusade to change the balance to make it equal to min/maxed builds. People that run Berserker, DON’T use it at world bosses. You know why? Because that isn’t optimal. ‘Dynamic Combat’ involves using your many tools appropriately for the situation.

TehPwnerer.7215:

tigirius.9014:

Tman.6349:

TehPwnerer.7215:

Title. I want to know if I’ll be able to actually run a viable condition build at some point.

Thanks.

Conditions have always been viable. In fact, they’re incredibly powerful except in every aspect of the game outside of dungeons and zerg content. Are conditions ever going to be capable of 100k bursts? No. That flies in the face of DoT/attrition style play. Apples will never be the same as oranges.

Not in open world boss fights mainly because anytime a new condition is added it cancels the previous one if the stack is maxed. And most of them are stack max 1. There’s been ample talk about how to fix it from conversions to a new stack of a higher tier of damage for fire and poison, to actually only allowing classes who are specced grandemaster into condition damage builds to do condition damage and rebuilding the skills so they don’t apply conditions unless one is in a condition build (so removing bleeds and poison etc from burst damage builds entirely).

So they have the solutions they just need to implement them.

Honestly, those are some great ideas. Being specced into grand master traits for conditions only to see someone auto attacking a world boss to get credit and applying bleed stacks with his rifle that overwrite mine is really irritating.

One of these items was in the suggestions folder. The other was discussed at length in which even game reviewers became involved and they came up with the idea of removing conditions from zerker only builds entirely.

I like that one the most however it doesn’t really fixit entirely, they’d have to do something about stacks too because it would still cause a problem with more than one condi damage person there.

I think the stacks turning into higher stack higher damage conditions would work well, like deep wounds for bleeds, or envenomed for poison, or Charred for fire LOL

I also suggested that crits be more meaningful with these conditions it was something that had to be done in other games finally because DoT heavy classes just weren’t soloable in these other titles and often didn’t deliver the DPS so they became unpopular. I’ve watched my crits and they are terrible low compared to normal DoTs and it’s really something they need to fix. I’ve also noticed that things like poison do less than bleeds something I think needs to be remedied because poison is poison it’s deadly in real life and shouldn’t be treated like the common cold in combat.

I never understood why the condition cap isn’t unique for every attacker.

Axelwarrior.9084:

I never understood why the condition cap isn’t unique for every attacker.

They keep saying it’s too much of a load on servers however I’ve played games in which tons of conditions of the same type and even debuffs were never a problem like Rift for example, multiples of the same class/spec happen often in every mmo and their debuffs/DoTs stacked normally even after going F2P.

The problem isn’t even limited to the stacking problem.

Even solo, a condition player can do a maximum of ~8500dps. This is assuming 100% uptime of all conditions and 100% uptime of might and 25 sigil stacks.

A power build (Warrior, ele, guard, thief, ranger) can reach 11k dps with a standard rotation. (engineer mesmer and power necros top out at around 9500dps).

This is due to conditions inability to crit and the lack of a zerker equivalent gear set, combined with the 100% duration cap and the stack limit. SO even solo, you are still worse than a power build in about 90% of the situations. There are a few high armor bosses that can actually be killed faster by conditions, but they account for about 2% of the game.

Conditions really just need a complete overhaul, there is no quick fix.

Tman.6349:

Morsus.5106:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Still the only content that the player will overly suffer for is what I mentioned (as they will possibly denied rewards due to lack of damage). Otherwise, the player will still be “successful”, tho potentially not effective as they could be.

Play a dungeon with 5 bleed rifle warriors and then play it with 5 anything-other-than-condition warriors and tell me conditions are fine in group play. Burning and poison are in an even worse place because it can cap out at one person, due to it stacking duration. As soon as the enemy is perma burned/poisoned it doesn’t matter how many players you have, because you’ll still be doing the damage of the one or two people it takes to perma burn/poison. In solo content conditions are awesome, but as soon as you have more than two or so people you are at the limit for conditions.

I love these examples that demand build DIVERSITY, but then use silly examples like how FIVE condi rifle warriors will be ineffective. O.o Many people run conditions to solo dungeons. Those same rifle condi warriors can finish a dungeon just fine too. No they don’t play well together (WITHOUT variety lol), but it is viable to achieve the goal. As was said before, zerg content is the real problem where enemies are burned before enough damage can be applied to tag mobs. The impression that I’ve always got from these different arguments is “every other option should be equally capable of dungeon speed clears and welcome in those groups”. I really don’t understand this mentality of choosing sub-optimal builds for content and then going on a crusade to change the balance to make it equal to min/maxed builds. People that run Berserker, DON’T use it at world bosses. You know why? Because that isn’t optimal. ‘Dynamic Combat’ involves using your many tools appropriately for the situation.

It doesn’t have to be bleed rifle warriors. Bleed Rifle Warrior is the only condition build I’ve ever tried to use, so it’s the example I always pull up. If you have more than three people stacking bleeds, regardless of build, it works improperly. Many classes also apply conditions even if they don’t want/need to. My Berserker Guardian would gladly stop burning enemies so that the burning based build in the dungeon could apply theirs, but unfortunately I don’t have a choice in the matter.

Axelwarrior.9084:

I never understood why the condition cap isn’t unique for every attacker.

Because they are debuffs.

For straight damaging condition like bleed or confusion, individual cap may work, regardless of technical difficulty.

But for other conditions, like vuln, it has to be stacked on the target since the effect affects all the damage taken by the mob. If it is calculated individually, vuln will probably only affect the damage done by yourself, which limits the team work.

Also how does it display on the target has to be in consideration. Different players has different condition duration, so how long does it show on the target? How many stacks does it show on the target? For now, if you see less than 3 bleeds on yourself, you probably just let it be, but what if 5 people each has 3 bleeds on you, how would that be properly displayed?

Axelwarrior.9084:

I never understood why the condition cap isn’t unique for every attacker.

In an instanced area, this would be possible to some extent as the stacks would not be excessive, but in an open world zone (that a single server has to keep up with EVERY stack in that zone) it would overload the computational potential of the server (or at the very least could highly compromise the overall performance of the entire zone and any other zones running on that particular server). That computational limit is WHY any individual target can only have 25 stacks of a particular condition.

I’m guessing they do not want to fragment builds from Open World vs Dungeon and this is why they do not alter the current Condi stack method in Dungeons (i.e. they want the mechanic to be consistent across all play modes).

Also, if each player had their own stacks, Condi in general would have to be nerfed so it wouldn’t be UBER overpowered (10 Condi players could eventually generate insane amounts of damage fairly quickly).

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The problem isn’t even limited to the stacking problem.

Even solo, a condition player can do a maximum of ~8500dps. This is assuming 100% uptime of all conditions and 100% uptime of might and 25 sigil stacks.

A power build (Warrior, ele, guard, thief, ranger) can reach 11k dps with a standard rotation. (engineer mesmer and power necros top out at around 9500dps).

Just curious how you arrived at the dps numbers for the classes.

Morsus.5106:

Play a dungeon with 5 bleed rifle warriors and then play it with 5 anything-other-than-condition warriors and tell me conditions are fine in group play.

What if bleed is maxed out, and burning, and poison, and vulnerability, etc. Would that not be effective?

Mfw 5 of the same build all relying on the same condition is obviously not a good idea and rightfully shouldn’t be.

The difference between conditions and and direct damage is, with direct damage you can do only direct damage with not much of a drawback as long as you have a ranged weapon, or can cover ground very quickly.

With conditions, you need to spec for survivability, either through stealth for thieves, DS for necros, Blocks and blinds for guardians (burn on block ftw) and the typical mesmer shenanigans. If you don’t spec to survive when using pure conditions, you will be useless. Damage specs will shred you to pieces and you will be left wondering what happened to your damage.

PvE being in mind I assume:

• Perhaps make Vulnerability to increase damage for conditions too (old suggestion, don’t remember who), I asked around abit about this and one player said that it’d be good to have change for PvE and PvP, well not certain of it myself, only the devs might know.

• Perhaps make some threshold that prevents low powered conditions from overriding the stronger ones (Don’t know if someone suggested something like this). Dunno how it could be made tho, to give low priority to low powered conditions and allow high powered conditions to replace the ones below the threshold, while conditions above cannot replace each other until there’s only ones that are above the threshold. Well not sure how this kind of thing would be implemented, also that there must be a “sweet spot” found for the threshold.

• Or instead of threshold, conditions will replace the other if it’s condition damage source is weaker. But perhaps not, since it’d make war between players trying to max out condition dmg, but then again it’s about the speed which one can apply conditions, but now thinking it further, threshold would be better…

• Other suggestion was “critical conditions”, don’t remember much about this one, but I think it was about giving conditions chance on crit to inflict cond dmgXduration instantly instead of applying condition to tick.