Guild Wars 2

mjharrison.3209:

Distaste.4801:

Direct damage is currently better in probably 90% of situations. Perhaps if you’re fighting a high armor target with protection on and no condition removal, condition damage is better, but for everything else direct damage is better. The fact that people with condition damage almost have to stack precision to get another condition is just bad mechanics. There should be “on condition tick” sigils that have a chance on tick to proc another condition. Why ArenaNet is so focused on crit boggles my mind. Think outside the box! On hit sigils, On heal, On dodge, On stealth, on Block, On evade, etc. ArenaNet has had plenty of room to expand but they’ve kept most of the decent sigil effects in the on crit area.

This hits on one of the several fundamental reasons why this game is so poorly designed relative to GW1 – a lack of conditional effects/events.

GW1 had skills that procced on acquiring a condition, losing a condition, acquiring a hex, losing a hex, acquiring an enchantment, losing an enchantment, amongst others. The existence of skills like these allowed, for example, builds that were solely focused around the application and quick removal of (conditions/hexes/enchants) rather than the degen caused by the conditions themselves.

I don’t understand at all why the designers of GW2 decided to eliminate conditional effects in favour of straight damage skills. It goes to the heart of what made the GW1 skill system so great.

It also was part of what made it broken in places and made classes like the Dervish awesome in skilled hands and not that good in the hands of others. I single out the Dervish here because their whole initial thing was stocking up Enchantments and then blowing them up to power effects. Mesmers had the same thing going with Mesmer Hexes, and they were likewise . . . well, you really had to be able to play a Mesmer to play a Mesmer well.

One of the major issues in GW1 was, after every skill rebalance and edit, there would be dozens of builds which would take advantage of the changes in order to pretty much trivialize things. There was often a blindness of how some subset of 200 skills would actually interact with each other when used in a certain combination. See “55 Monk”, the first case where interplay of skills off each other led to something entirely outside the power curve intended.

(And for giggles, note that in the “Norn Fighting Tournament” Mhenlo showed up with a 55 Monk build and someone else as a “Bunny Thumper Ranger”. And Mhenlo was one person who got questions on how to be beaten more than Magnus the Bison in my alliance chat :P )

I think the idea was that they didn’t want to go down that road again of complexity, and having to keep up with all the options.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

One of the major issues in GW1 was, after every skill rebalance and edit, there would be dozens of builds which would take advantage of the changes in order to pretty much trivialize things. There was often a blindness of how some subset of 200 skills would actually interact with each other when used in a certain combination. See “55 Monk”, the first case where interplay of skills off each other led to something entirely outside the power curve intended.
…
I think the idea was that they didn’t want to go down that road again of complexity, and having to keep up with all the options.

True but that’s what gave GW1 such depth and longevity. Instead of shaving a little of that depth off to make balancing easier they took a sledgehammer to it, to the point that within 2 months of release, the game feels really bland. All the classes and skills are virtually the same, and play virtually the same, only with minor variations. Where are the skills like soul barbs and fragility for example?

It doesn’t help that the game devs have been (rather arrogantly) asserting the whole game pop just needs to “learn to play” for 5 months, but the plethora of forums posts all saying the same thing, and the big drop in player numbers/participation (esp in sPVP) do not lie – the game/combat design is clearly sorely lacking depth & interest. Especially compared to GW1.

Saturn.6591:

What you’re saying is so… wrong, that I just had to log in and reply. Even if the chance to get the bleeding on a critical hit would be 100%, one second of one stack of bleeding would maybe add around 100 damage to this hit. If your opponent is invulnerable, the hit will not do anything and thus it can also not crit and you get no bleeding on it. Actually, as far as I know, you can not APPLY any conditions on someone who’s invulnerable (at least not with weapon-skills). Those conditions that are already in effect continue to tick, though. However, 1 second is going away almost instantly, so there will not be a single stack of bleeding from this trait while someone’s invulnerable.

First of all, if anything invulnerability hurts direct damage more than condition damage specifically for the reason you’ve stated and I’ve highlighted in bold in the above quote. Even if the target is soaking 100% damage, conditions continue to damage it. That’s a major advantage to conditions and a point you seem to have made against your own arguement.

Are there tons of situations where this applies? Not really, no. There isn’t much of a reason to discuss its positives and negatives in those situations (save supply camps in WvW). Most of the time a target is invulnerable because of a specific mechanic and regardless of your build trying to “dps it down” isn’t the best option.

Saturn.6591:

Now let’s look at direct damage. Let’s say an attack does 1000 points of damage. If it crits, you get at least 1500 damage (more if you’ve got increased crit-dmg from traits, equip or runes).
That’s a 100% chance for 500 more damage vs a 66% chance for 100 more damage. Of course the direct damage is affected by protection, but it’s not like most mobs/players run around with perma-protection. Also, the chance for bleeding actually requires a specific trait, while the increased direct-damage doesn’t need a trait at all.

Outside of the fact that you’ve blatently chosen a larger hit than 1s of the bleed condition to beef your arguement, that’s a very valid point. However you’re missing one critical element: the attack that the player applying the conditions with also does damage, and also crits. In fact most skills in the game that apply conditions, either on-hit or chance-on-crit, will do damage in conjunction with the condition itself. Anet has built condition-heavy attacks that way for a reason and you absolutely have to take that into consideration when comparing/balancing “direct damage only” attacks.

Saturn.6591:

The other thing that’s influenced by precision are sigils that have a chance to proc on crit (the one for bleeding is actually much better than the necro minor trait or that ranger MAJOR trait). I’d say in terms of sigils, direct damage and condition damage builds benefit equally from precision; that’s why I didn’t use them in the example above. Except if… uhm… does someone know if the lightning strike from Sigil of Air and the fire blast from Sigil of Fire can crit as well? Because if they can, they would kinda double-benefit from precision.

As far as I know they can. I’ve watched my combat log with the fireblast proc and the damage seems to fluctuate between that of a normal hit and a critical.

Saturn.6591:

Generally, I do think that for condition-builds, precision isn’t the way to go if you’re looking to increase your dps; except maybe for Mesmer (because of the “Sharper Images” trait). I assume Necros and Rangers would get a bigger dps-increase from carrion-gear than from rabid-gear. But obviously, damage is not the only thing that matters, so they may also decide to go for precision instead of power (thus, it makes perfect sense that condition damage gear with precision on it exists). But (yes, another “but”) that’s like… trade utility for damage, which isn’t the case for direct-damage builds.

The main reason people get confused by precision is because they see it solely as an offensive stat. Landing a critical hit can ‘proc’ a great many things that are not damage-oriented as well depending on your class. Also, it is more beneficial to have higher precision when using something like omnomberry pies which steals life on roughly 2 of every 3 critical hits. It all depends on what your build excels at.

mjharrison.3209:

True but that’s what gave GW1 such depth and longevity. Instead of shaving a little of that depth off to make balancing easier they took a sledgehammer to it, to the point that within 2 months of release, the game feels really bland. All the classes and skills are virtually the same, and play virtually the same, only with minor variations. Where are the skills like soul barbs and fragility for example?

Throw in “Spirit of Failure” and “Spirit Shackles” and you have listed here all four hexes I loathed to get smacked with during my time in GW1. Partly because they never seemed to work as awesome when on my side.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Actually, no, they can’t be applied when you can’t hit the target. If they’re using an evade or block move then you can’t apply them because you have to actually hit them. Righteous Indignation doesn’t keep you from hitting them, it just insanely reduces damage and condition duration on them.
And if you were direct damage you could’ve killed them in that same number of hits without having to run away at all.
And direct would have downed that person before you got downed at all, which gives you even more of an advantage.

Righteous Indignation reduces all incoming direct damage by 100%. Attacks still land and therefore conditions can still be applied.

What you’re not realizing is that Vulnerability directly effects the buff’s %. In other words, you can only do direct damage to the target with that buff when Vulernability is applied. Otherwise, you could be doing all the direct dps in the world and you’d still end up with a bunch of 0s over the target’s head. That is, until it attacks you a couple times and kills you from massive damage.

A few comments/questions:

Why were condition caps initiated in the first place?

As an engi, I feel that I could probably outplay most zerker warriors, but I still feel useless in dungeons. My favorite builds in beta were P/P condition builds, which are now not nearly as viable.

Also, I miss GW1 diversity. Theory crafting gave that game longevity. There was great fun in trying to do things faster, better.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Conncept, bluewanders: Do you two think you can continue this discussion without open or thinly veiled personal insults? I would hate if the moderators would have to hand out warnings, as overall this is an interesting discussion.

Thank you.

Moderator,

Do you believe that you can respond to this threads content of merit rather than a squabble that you almost always initiate an “infraction” for in private?

We want to hear you answer questions.

I like the concept of condition damage a lot.
Since it is way of circumventing certain defenses, it has a great deal of strategic potential.
I just think condition effects need to be altered to play that role more effectively.

Bleeding = Move the “heal potency decreased by 33%” effect from poison to Bleeding.

Poison = Up the damage done and add an “endurance loss” effect. Like a Degen for both health and endurance.

Burning = Add an effect similar to disease from GW1 (disease in GW1 spread to other targets when they got to close to each other).

Confusion = I think the skill should be both a combination of Backfire and Diversion from GW1 mesmer and not stack in intensity, but instead stack in duration. It’s already got a backfire effect.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Backfire
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Diversion

Chill = Add an effect that lowers affected’s skill activation time and drop the increased skill recharge effect.

Cripple = I think it is fine as is.

Condition damage should work like Confusion damage, then it would be a viable alternative.

Dante.1508:

Condition damage should work like Confusion damage, then it would be a viable alternative.

Condition damage doesn’t need to work like confusion damage. Condition damage in and of itself is fine. A single Condi class in a 5 man group can do rather decent damage with their stacks in addition to their direct damage (Ask any decent Necro/Ranger). The MAIN problem with Condi damage is how Anet implemented it. Max stacks at 25, duration issues with multiple Condi classes, single Poison/Fire stacks, etc. The following issues need to be answered/addressed by the dev’s first;

1. Why are the stacks capped at 25?
2. Why can’t each class have their own stacks on a target instead of the 25 stack limit?
3. Why do our Poison/Fire DoT’s reset/cancel each other out?

These are the main issues of condi classes. If these issues are fixed and we still have “issues” then yes, I can see the whole mechanic being in need of a rework.

Redscope.6215:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Actually, no, they can’t be applied when you can’t hit the target. If they’re using an evade or block move then you can’t apply them because you have to actually hit them. Righteous Indignation doesn’t keep you from hitting them, it just insanely reduces damage and condition duration on them.
And if you were direct damage you could’ve killed them in that same number of hits without having to run away at all.
And direct would have downed that person before you got downed at all, which gives you even more of an advantage.

Righteous Indignation reduces all incoming direct damage by 100%. Attacks still land and therefore conditions can still be applied.

What you’re not realizing is that Vulnerability directly effects the buff’s %. In other words, you can only do direct damage to the target with that buff when Vulernability is applied. Otherwise, you could be doing all the direct dps in the world and you’d still end up with a bunch of 0s over the target’s head. That is, until it attacks you a couple times and kills you from massive damage.

1. I said as much in my post.
2. Yeah, vulnerability makes you able to deal damage to Righteous Indignation. However, since vulnerability doesn’t deal any damage on its own, and is in fact the most absolutely necessary condition to actually HAVE a cap because without one it would be stupefying, it is not relevant to this discussion.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You can’t “evade” damage from stacks, mostly. Since this isn’t an actual thing going on and I’m not in a position to run tests? I can’t say other than to speculate weakly. WvW is not a huge strength but I’ve seen Damage over Time effects with more unrestricted stacking rules cause problems in the past.

You can purge or transfer conditions though. Many people are simply incapable of monitoring conditions and acting accordingly instead of just watching those big direct damage numbers pop up, unfortunately.

Iruwen.3164:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You can’t “evade” damage from stacks, mostly. Since this isn’t an actual thing going on and I’m not in a position to run tests? I can’t say other than to speculate weakly. WvW is not a huge strength but I’ve seen Damage over Time effects with more unrestricted stacking rules cause problems in the past.

You can purge or transfer conditions though. Many people are simply incapable of monitoring conditions and acting accordingly instead of just watching those big direct damage numbers pop up, unfortunately.

Well of course you can get rid of the conditions, but you can’t get rid of them constantly/continuously over short periods of time. There is an upper limit on how often you can drop conditions off yourself, depending on your class. And race, if you think about it.

Redscope.6215:

As far as I know they can. I’ve watched my combat log with the fireblast proc and the damage seems to fluctuate between that of a normal hit and a critical.

According to the wiki, the damage varies but it doesn’t actually crit.

Redfeather.6401:

Burning = Add an effect similar to disease from GW1 (disease in GW1 spread to other targets when they got to close to each other).

I don’t think this would work out well with the huge WvW zergs…

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Iruwen.3164:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You can’t “evade” damage from stacks, mostly. Since this isn’t an actual thing going on and I’m not in a position to run tests? I can’t say other than to speculate weakly. WvW is not a huge strength but I’ve seen Damage over Time effects with more unrestricted stacking rules cause problems in the past.

You can purge or transfer conditions though. Many people are simply incapable of monitoring conditions and acting accordingly instead of just watching those big direct damage numbers pop up, unfortunately.

Well of course you can get rid of the conditions, but you can’t get rid of them constantly/continuously over short periods of time. There is an upper limit on how often you can drop conditions off yourself, depending on your class. And race, if you think about it.

The same is true for direct damage, unless you found a way to constantly evade it I don’t know of.

PS: it’s already way too easy to escape a fight for many classes once you notice you’ll probably lose, even if a whole zerg is hunting you down, which is a problem with scouts in WvW. Active conditions at least have a chance of forcing people into downed state.

Iruwen.3164:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Iruwen.3164:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You can’t “evade” damage from stacks, mostly. Since this isn’t an actual thing going on and I’m not in a position to run tests? I can’t say other than to speculate weakly. WvW is not a huge strength but I’ve seen Damage over Time effects with more unrestricted stacking rules cause problems in the past.

You can purge or transfer conditions though. Many people are simply incapable of monitoring conditions and acting accordingly instead of just watching those big direct damage numbers pop up, unfortunately.

Well of course you can get rid of the conditions, but you can’t get rid of them constantly/continuously over short periods of time. There is an upper limit on how often you can drop conditions off yourself, depending on your class. And race, if you think about it.

The same is true for direct damage, unless you found a way to constantly evade it I don’t know of.

PS: it’s already way too easy to escape a fight for many classes once you notice you’ll probably lose, even if a whole zerg is hunting you down, which is a problem with scouts in WvW. Active conditions at least have a chance of forcing people into downed state.

Constant evasion? In a way, Stealth can do that, people have said a lot of unkind things in regards to that. I am not entirely sure but having a long-timed Vigor can help you get an impressive amount of dodge capability.

I play a ranger (badly), so honestly, no matter what changes I’m still going down way more than anyone else.