Guild Wars 2

Is everyone playing condition and this is leaving the game bad for those who like to power and getting everyone equal, would have how to leave the damage equal or similar, sorry I’m using google translator more hope you have understood thanks

After what 3½ year of power or go home we still got 2 years of condi being good mate so its all fine and dandy.

It would be nice if they could balance the two to be equal. But yeah, power specs are feeling what it was like for condi specs for years. It was zerk or go home.

Condi specs are largely in favour now due to less risk associated with using them. It’s not like the zerker meta was back before HoT where conditions were literally pointless outside of solo play. Is that my poison on the boss or another player’s? Power builds are not pointless they just aren’t in favour and to play them successfully at a high lvl requires a lot of risk, skill, and a healthy dose of good luck. While power builds could use small changes, too much will put them right back where we were before with zerk only.

Oh, the necros no longer getting the boot.

I would LOVE an answer from A.net why they are continually stomping Power Warriors into the ground while promoting this disgusting “Condi Meta” nonsense. We’ll never get a real answer though. It just doesn’t make ANY sense at all especially in the last patch that Power got nerfed again on Warrior… it was already in a bad spot but they decided to kick them again?

They really need to get their crap together and learn how to make both Power and Condition builds viable without trashing one or the other completely. It’s embarrassing.

Just…. play how you want…………..

SmirkDog.3160:

Just…. play how you want…………..

Right, because it is totally fair to my teammates to fill a dps slot and deal half the damage another dps spec would?

Linken.6345:

After what 3½ year of power or go home we still got 2 years of condi being good mate so its all fine and dandy.

The switch from Power to Condi domination was in Aug 2014 so not 3,5y of Power domination. Condi has rained supreme longer then power now…

Looking at Scourge,Soulbeast,Renegade,Mirage I dont see that to end anytime soon.

One of the problems is condition duration, it should be removed and condition durations on skills should be adjused. Also, crit damage should be 200% by default (like in most other MMOs), instead of 150%, that would help power builds.

xarallei.4279:

It would be nice if they could balance the two to be equal. But yeah, power specs are feeling what it was like for condi specs for years. It was zerk or go home.

Both are just ways of dealing damage. Their entire difference (other than minute details of how you set up your char) is how the numbers above the enemies’ heads look.

What matters is how much DPS you do, not how you do it. Hence balance would be nice to have, but not important. If your classes’ top DPS spec deals 80% with power, so be it. If it’s 70% conditions, so be it. It’s just a different setup, you deal maximum DPS as your role either way, and your gameplay is maximum DPS rotations.

Carighan.6758:

xarallei.4279:

It would be nice if they could balance the two to be equal. But yeah, power specs are feeling what it was like for condi specs for years. It was zerk or go home.

Both are just ways of dealing damage. Their entire difference (other than minute details of how you set up your char) is how the numbers above the enemies’ heads look.

What matters is how much DPS you do, not how you do it. Hence balance would be nice to have, but not important. If your classes’ top DPS spec deals 80% with power, so be it. If it’s 70% conditions, so be it. It’s just a different setup, you deal maximum DPS as your role either way, and your gameplay is maximum DPS rotations.

Almost correct. However, you’re missing one important aspect. More important than how much DPS you do is how much fun you have doing it. Because this is a game and its ultimate purpose is having fun. It doesn’t matter how the numbers look, I agree. But it does matter if you find it fun or not.

Now, of course the way you deal damage isn’t necessarily correlated to the game mechanic you use to deal it. It just so happens that I enjoy certain power builds and the condi ones I’ve tried feel more or less bland and uninspiring.

I don’t think ANet is going to change it just so all the zerker babies can have fun again. Adjust, get left behind, or just play the kitten game.

So… basically you’re saying ANet should let the condi babies have some fun, too?

As far as I know, top damage classes in PvE are Thief, Elem and Guard and their builds are power. In addition, open world PvE significantly favor power builds. From PvE standpoint things seem fairly balanced between power and condition.

otto.5684:

As far as I know, top damage classes in PvE are Thief, Elem and Guard and their builds are power. In addition, open world PvE significantly favor power builds. From PvE standpoint things seem fairly balanced between power and condition.

Thief’s top spec is condi, not power. Power ele and guard are only high on large hit boxes. Though guard is respectable at least. If you look at the small hit box benchmark it’s mostly condi, condi, condi. There is a definite bias toward condi as far as raiding is concerned.

Power specs still deal as much, or more, damage as they ever did. That’s not to say that a particular spec hasn’t suffered, but there are power options that offer a kitten-ton of damage which is front-loaded. Condi was second-fiddle (or not even in the orchestra for 3.5 years or so). If it is now top of the heap, then the scales will not be balanced for another 2+ years, and that’s not even considering that power specs are a lot closer to condi results now than condi was to power before the changes to how condi worked.

I love how people in this thread debate over power versus condi meta, while it doesn’t really matter to anyone in this thread like at all.

The DPS difference is only slightly noticeable if you are doing perfect rotation and is capable of playing your class well. Which most people on the official forum probably are not capable of. This discussion is pointless.

Linken.6345:

After what 3½ year of power or go home we still got 2 years of condi being good mate so its all fine and dandy.

And this is what people believe “equality” means.

Ha apparently I was a savant with my 2nd character, a Ranger. Decided about 3 years ago I would hybrid Rampager and Zerk gear for his build. It drove my angry min max friend nuts. I didn’t care it made the game fun and this is a character I enjoy.

Yes I have Zerk Ele and Warrior too among others.

As long as there is no power-creep, it doesn´t matter wether you chose power or condi.

Mea.5491:

One of the problems is condition duration, it should be removed and condition durations on skills should be adjused. Also, crit damage should be 200% by default (like in most other MMOs), instead of 150%, that would help power builds.

That would just bring things back to the “zerker or gtfo” meta. The difference between condi and power isn’t that huge except for a few builds. (Reaper/revenant) Smaller adjustments would work just fine to make power more desirable.

warbignime.4610:

I love how people in this thread debate over power versus condi meta, while it doesn’t really matter to anyone in this thread like at all.

The DPS difference is only slightly noticeable if you are doing perfect rotation and is capable of playing your class well. Which most people on the official forum probably are not capable of. This discussion is pointless.

You miss the point entirely. A lot of people find Condi Builds to be boring to play. I know you were excited to come and look down on people in this topic but please try to understand what it’s about.

The game would be better balanced if we would have Dual Effect Attributes, as this would allow Anet to implement defensive effects that can work against the powercreep of power builds in form of giving us access to to defensive effects, like Attributes that can reduce the chance of receiving critical hits, making this way Weakness obsolete, so that it can be either reworked or removed.
it would allow Anet to implemente a defensive Attribute Effect with that we can increase our Endurance regeneration, with that on the counterside would become Vigor obsolete, so that it can be either removed or reworked.
A possible way to reduce the effect spam of conditions and boons, what will help in general to balance the game easier, if Anet successfully can reduce a bit the effect spam of this game.

On the other side of the coin could help a dual effect attribute system to implement effects that affect how effectively conditions will be against your defense in regard of how much they can ignore your defense percentally, what would help massively agaisnt the power creep of condition builds as well, if peopel would finally get an effective way to reduce the damage you can receive from conditions maximum, instead of having only a chance to reduce the durations by using buff food, which enemies easily can counter again with thweir own buff food, putting us back to 0, still having the problem of condition power creep gettign spammed with them full to death, if you have no access to resistance with your class.

So more E-specs Anet adds, so more will it become neccessary over time, that anet puts the whole condi/boon/attribute gameplay of the game under a rework, so that the combat system doesn’t break in somewhen sooner or later from this flood of effects that we have already.

They need to reduce the amount of effects, to create space for new added effects that they continously add with new e-specs in the future.
And a merged and reworked dual effect attribute system will support this and will help in equalizing offensive and defensive gameplay. It has to stop, that only offensive gameplay styles are competitive due to the attirubte system favoring them with better synergies between the attributes, while the defensive effects have no synergies at all between each other.

The annoying part about condition builds is that condition accessories with viper stats are a pain in the ass to get as you can’t get them via guild missions or laurels.

Mawdrey stat selection also doesn’t allow for Viper so you don’t have backpiece viper options through fractals nor rings either.

It’s an unbelievably stupid gap in acquisition.

otto.5684:

As far as I know, top damage classes in PvE are Thief, Elem and Guard and their builds are power. In addition, open world PvE significantly favor power builds. From PvE standpoint things seem fairly balanced between power and condition.

Open world is irrelevant. Everything can plow through open world. Balance only matters where there is some challenge. For PvE, meaning high-level fractals and raids.

There is… one issue I have with condi superiority.

Power Advantages:
Instantaneous

Power Disadvantages:
Affected by Toughness
Affected by Protection
Affected by Weakness

Condi Advantages:
Ignores Armor

Condi Disadvantages:
Can be cleansed
Affected by Resistance
Ramp Up Time

The bold parts are what concerns me. In PVE, there are very few enemies that cleanse their conditions or have the resistance boon. However, there are a lot of enemies that have protection, use weakness, or have increased armor. This means that there are a lot of circumstances where power damage receives significant debuffs. Dots occupy the special damage niche by bypassing many of those mechanics altogether.

One would expect that, to balance things out in PVE, we would have power damage hold the throne. There is a myriad of ways to topple that throne and give condition damage situational benefits. But as it stands now, the only advantage power damage has is its ability to quickly kill veteran mobs or lower. When fighting champs or legendary enemies, condition damage is best by default and protection + weakness + armor only reinforce this dominance.

The solution for me is simple. I built ascended Celestial gear for all weights and it is neither here nor there but I stopped worrying about meta builds and dropping huge loads of cash on upgrading it when the balance changes. With celestial, you still have some ok condi dmg, ok power, ok boons and solid survivability…and no more gold wasting.

Excellent Name.9574:

The solution for me is simple. I built ascended Celestial gear for all weights and it is neither here nor there but I stopped worrying about meta builds and dropping huge loads of cash on upgrading it when the balance changes. With celestial, you still have some ok condi dmg, ok power, ok boons and solid survivability…and no more gold wasting.

And no endgame, too.

Feanor.2358:

Excellent Name.9574:

The solution for me is simple. I built ascended Celestial gear for all weights and it is neither here nor there but I stopped worrying about meta builds and dropping huge loads of cash on upgrading it when the balance changes. With celestial, you still have some ok condi dmg, ok power, ok boons and solid survivability…and no more gold wasting.

And no endgame, too.

Ony if you are doing endgame stuff with the self-proclaimed Elites. Celestial works fine when playing with Your guild. Both, Fractals and Raids.

Guess I’ll call this part 2 of my post, since this blasted headache has caused me to drop the train of thought abruptly for four hours.

For the sake of diversity in play and overall balance between damage types (and likewise, the classes that deal with them), it is important to have power damage be superior. The game already has the tools built in to give condition damage selective advantage, whether it be attack range, protection, weakness, or enemy armor levels. The reverse is not true. Giving power damage a selective advantage requires jumping through several of hoops:

Hoop 1: Conditions tend to be easier to apply at range, which makes them the safer, defensive option. Power damage tends to be applied in melee distance, which is the riskier option. To encourage power damage is to discourage range, which is difficult to do. You have to build enemies to have bizarre mechanics to force players closer, and even then they’ll just use their condi weapons at point blank.

Hoop 2: Resistance is overpowered. In PVP it is managed by its rare application, but in PVE to give an enemy reliable resistance is to almost completely shut out condition damage. The boon is an on/off switch, not a partial percentage reduction. You can’t throw it around like you do with protection.

Hoop 3: Regular cleanses also act like an on-off switch. Again, this makes it very difficult to balance the usage of cleanses to make power damage preferential without utterly destroying condition damage.

Hoop 4: It is easier to build for conditions, since they technically only require two stats (expertise and malice). This shows up as a balance issue in WvW, since a player in Dire Gear is able to maintain a larger proportion of their damage output over its counterpart in Soldiers. This also translates to PVE performance, where a non-viper set of condition gear is going to perform better than a non-zerker set of power gear. To counterbalance this, you’d have to somehow make having less defensive stats less risky than having more defensive stats.

The only practical way to give power an advantage is to give enemies low armor values, and the only way to discourage conditions is to lower armor values while inflating health. This… isn’t mechanically interesting like protection and weakness are. It just makes certain enemies more susceptible to direct damage.

Excellent Name.9574:

Feanor.2358:

Excellent Name.9574:

The solution for me is simple. I built ascended Celestial gear for all weights and it is neither here nor there but I stopped worrying about meta builds and dropping huge loads of cash on upgrading it when the balance changes. With celestial, you still have some ok condi dmg, ok power, ok boons and solid survivability…and no more gold wasting.

And no endgame, too.

Ony if you are doing endgame stuff with the self-proclaimed Elites. Celestial works fine when playing with Your guild. Both, Fractals and Raids.

While this is true, it makes things harder. I guess deliberately choosing to struggle just ain’t my thing.

Feanor.2358:

Excellent Name.9574:

Feanor.2358:

Excellent Name.9574:

The solution for me is simple. I built ascended Celestial gear for all weights and it is neither here nor there but I stopped worrying about meta builds and dropping huge loads of cash on upgrading it when the balance changes. With celestial, you still have some ok condi dmg, ok power, ok boons and solid survivability…and no more gold wasting.

And no endgame, too.

Ony if you are doing endgame stuff with the self-proclaimed Elites. Celestial works fine when playing with Your guild. Both, Fractals and Raids.

While this is true, it makes things harder. I guess deliberately choosing to struggle just ain’t my thing.

Struggle? Not at all. Celestials are doing ~15-20% less dmg than meta classes, based purely on stats, but Raids and fractals are group undertaking and skill balance and combinations are more important than personal DPS. The only thing You will notice is that bosses take around 5% more time to beat, not ~15-20% as You are not soloing.

In a balanced game You would not have to make those decisions and unfortunately, GW2 is not a balanced game, nor Anet will ever balance it out since that is the way for them to make money, always keepiing players in chase of the next balance.

For one, going cele in raids will screw the tanking because it is toughness based. Unless you wanna tank as a “dps”, that is. Furthermore, I highly doubt the difference in your personal dps will be only 15-20%. Even more so if all your teammates decide to “save gold” and go cele, which will end up in abysmal boon coverage and trash dps. The latter applies to fractals as well.

Excellent Name.9574:

Feanor.2358:

Excellent Name.9574:

Feanor.2358:

Excellent Name.9574:

The solution for me is simple. I built ascended Celestial gear for all weights and it is neither here nor there but I stopped worrying about meta builds and dropping huge loads of cash on upgrading it when the balance changes. With celestial, you still have some ok condi dmg, ok power, ok boons and solid survivability…and no more gold wasting.

And no endgame, too.

Ony if you are doing endgame stuff with the self-proclaimed Elites. Celestial works fine when playing with Your guild. Both, Fractals and Raids.

While this is true, it makes things harder. I guess deliberately choosing to struggle just ain’t my thing.

Struggle? Not at all. Celestials are doing ~15-20% less dmg than meta classes, based purely on stats, but Raids and fractals are group undertaking and skill balance and combinations are more important than personal DPS. The only thing You will notice is that bosses take around 5% more time to beat, not ~15-20% as You are not soloing.

In a balanced game You would not have to make those decisions and unfortunately, GW2 is not a balanced game, nor Anet will ever balance it out since that is the way for them to make money, always keepiing players in chase of the next balance.

No game ever achieves true balance.

That boss would only take 5% longer to beat if you are the only one gimping your DPS. In your example, the rest of your team would have to be running meta builds for DPS to compensate for your lower DPS. If your whole party was geared in celestial, then that 5% longer amount of time is going to go way up.

And that is fine if that’s what you guys prefer to play.

Also, no matter how balanced a game is, there will always be gear/trait/stat setups that are better at certain roles than others. Even if a DPS build does 1% more damage than another, it is still technically better even if the difference is negligible.

Vyrulisse.1246:

I would LOVE an answer from A.net why they are continually stomping Power Warriors into the ground while promoting this disgusting “Condi Meta” nonsense. We’ll never get a real answer though. It just doesn’t make ANY sense at all especially in the last patch that Power got nerfed again on Warrior… it was already in a bad spot but they decided to kick them again?

They really need to get their crap together and learn how to make both Power and Condition builds viable without trashing one or the other completely. It’s embarrassing.

If you want the hot new elite specs, you need to buy PoF.
If you want to gear (a lot of) those hot new elite specs (Viper’s) you need to buy HoT.
If you want to easily obtain Ascended Viper’s trinkets, then you need to buy Season 3.

That’s my best guess, anyways.

Feanor.2358:

SmirkDog.3160:

Just…. play how you want…………..

Right, because it is totally fair to my teammates to fill a dps slot and deal half the damage another dps spec would?

If the content gets beaten, why does it matter?

In any content I have cleared, I have never compared damage. Who does the most, least, etc. Because it doesn’t matter. There will always be someone dealing the least amount in a party.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

There is… one issue I have with condi superiority.

Power Advantages:
Instantaneous

Power Disadvantages:
Affected by Toughness
Affected by Protection
Affected by Weakness

Condi Advantages:
Ignores Armor

Condi Disadvantages:
Can be cleansed
Affected by Resistance
Ramp Up Time

The bold parts are what concerns me. In PVE, there are very few enemies that cleanse their conditions or have the resistance boon. However, there are a lot of enemies that have protection, use weakness, or have increased armor. This means that there are a lot of circumstances where power damage receives significant debuffs. Dots occupy the special damage niche by bypassing many of those mechanics altogether.

One would expect that, to balance things out in PVE, we would have power damage hold the throne. There is a myriad of ways to topple that throne and give condition damage situational benefits. But as it stands now, the only advantage power damage has is its ability to quickly kill veteran mobs or lower. When fighting champs or legendary enemies, condition damage is best by default and protection + weakness + armor only reinforce this dominance.

This is a very good post going nearly ignored. PvE doesn’t cleanse. There are no boons or condis that lower condi damage output other than Resistance, which is rare, if not totally absent, from PvE enemies. PvP/WvW you might have traits/skills/food for this. Enemies that transfer conditions are few and often negligible. The best you’ll get is a projectile reflect that sends your shots back your way.

Orpheal.8263:

The game would be better balanced if we would have Dual Effect Attributes, as this would allow Anet to implement defensive effects that can work against the powercreep of power builds in form of giving us access to to defensive effects, like Attributes that can reduce the chance of receiving critical hits, making this way Weakness obsolete, so that it can be either reworked or removed.
it would allow Anet to implemente a defensive Attribute Effect with that we can increase our Endurance regeneration, with that on the counterside would become Vigor obsolete, so that it can be either removed or reworked.
A possible way to reduce the effect spam of conditions and boons, what will help in general to balance the game easier, if Anet successfully can reduce a bit the effect spam of this game.

This doesn’t actually solve the problem, it just makes the math more complicated. The premise of defense stats quickly pales in comparison to damage avoidance effects, which this game uses at the core of its combat system. Given a choice between reducing incoming condi duration, or cleansing it…. which would you opt for? Crit chance mitigation lowers the DPS average, but it also nullifies a whole stat which is based on probability (and the large number of effects which are triggered by that specific event).

The net effect hasn’t changed….. DPS average will be still ranked based on highest numbers. But in the process, you’ve also completely over complicated how the system works, and reduced the reliability of non-passive actions across the board. The only thing left at that point is to power creep in order to differentiate difficulty scales.

The problem isn’t that the meta is condi, per se. The difference is that even when the meta was zerk, there was a way to counter play it.

Condi on the other hand doesn’t have a real counter play. If you get condi bombed, then you’re just dead. Full stop. Its why roaming in WvW is a joke most of the time and why the only meta these days is who out conditions the other, and its only going to get worse with the new elite specs.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

The problem isn’t that the meta is condi, per se. The difference is that even when the meta was zerk, there was a way to counter play it.

Condi on the other hand doesn’t have a real counter play. If you get condi bombed, then you’re just dead. Full stop. Its why roaming in WvW is a joke most of the time and why the only meta these days is who out conditions the other, and its only going to get worse with the new elite specs.

There’s nothing wrong with condi attrition builds. There are counters to those in the form of cleanses, and sustain. If people don’t want to spec for that, it’s their own fault. What is counter-intuitive is condi burst, which in addition to being an oxymoron, is a lot harder to deal with than attrition.

xarallei.4279:

It would be nice if they could balance the two to be equal. But yeah, power specs are feeling what it was like for condi specs for years. It was zerk or go home.

Except you can easily get Zerk from everywhere while Viper is expensive as hell.

IndigoSundown.5419:

PookieDaWombat.6209:

The problem isn’t that the meta is condi, per se. The difference is that even when the meta was zerk, there was a way to counter play it.

Condi on the other hand doesn’t have a real counter play. If you get condi bombed, then you’re just dead. Full stop. Its why roaming in WvW is a joke most of the time and why the only meta these days is who out conditions the other, and its only going to get worse with the new elite specs.

There’s nothing wrong with condi attrition builds. There are counters to those in the form of cleanses, and sustain. If people don’t want to spec for that, it’s their own fault. What is counter-intuitive is condi burst, which in addition to being an oxymoron, is a lot harder to deal with than attrition.

No one is running a condi-attrition build and even if they were, there is not enough condi removal for all classes to properly counter that amount of pressure without completely making a build soley around that. Condi in this game is simply broken and what I said still stands. Its all about who out condies the other person first.

Condi being pretty much better at everything is so people buy the expacs. Currently you can’t really play a condition build effectively in pve unless you have vipers, so you go buy HoT. Same with PoF, the new griever stat combo is just pure power creep. Look at Wiever and Firebrand, the main condition from both is fire. Get full grievers and easily max out fire duration with traits, runes, and sigils. That is going to be max DPS that will heavily overshadow pure berserker armor or viper armor. It’s terrible and will be very boring.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

IndigoSundown.5419:

PookieDaWombat.6209:

The problem isn’t that the meta is condi, per se. The difference is that even when the meta was zerk, there was a way to counter play it.

Condi on the other hand doesn’t have a real counter play. If you get condi bombed, then you’re just dead. Full stop. Its why roaming in WvW is a joke most of the time and why the only meta these days is who out conditions the other, and its only going to get worse with the new elite specs.

There’s nothing wrong with condi attrition builds. There are counters to those in the form of cleanses, and sustain. If people don’t want to spec for that, it’s their own fault. What is counter-intuitive is condi burst, which in addition to being an oxymoron, is a lot harder to deal with than attrition.

No one is running a condi-attrition build and even if they were, there is not enough condi removal for all classes to properly counter that amount of pressure without completely making a build soley around that. Condi in this game is simply broken and what I said still stands. Its all about who out condies the other person first.

Oh, please. WvW is swarmed by zerker daredevils and berzerkers, power builds.