Guild Wars 2

We all know this issue. We have all seen and we all know how it tends to choke out condition players in this game as far as PvE content goes.

When theres that one condition necro stacking bleeds but his bleeds get over ridden by the bleeds of 15-20 power builds that all stack bleeds as well. Despite the heavy investment he put into his build in order to make it work.

I dont want to turn this into a collection of rant posts. But instead into a grouping of ideas. I ask that any replies be used to discuss not who to blame for what but instead discuss actual solutions. I ask that you start by responding to anothers post before pushing forth your own opinion on the matter. I also ask that the response in question be constructive in nature.

The biggest issue I have seen: ALOT of builds apply bleed. Many apply bleeds accidentaly through interaction with minor traits. Many people bring traits that apply bleeds just because they think they don’t have anything better to bring. But in most cases the power builds that bring bleeds dont even really recognize there bleeds as a damage source. It is just “something that happens to be there”.

The most common solutions to the problem that I have seen discussed.

Method 1: The creation of new versions of conditions to account for the investment of a player in his bleed/confusion/torment.

Namely. If someone has over X amount of condition damage at the time of the attack. Instead of becoming a "bleed’ it becomes a “Gash” effect. Which is basically a much stronger bleed. Bleeding and Gashes would be affected by the same condition cleanse. If a mob or a player drops one. he drops the other as well. This prevents conditions from being more difficult to be cleansed as a whole while still preventing insignificant bleed damage from choking out the REAL bleeds.

Finisher effects would only apply the maxed out first stage of the condition the field is relevant to. (same you pass an arrow through a confusion field. It would only ever be “confusion at its max level” even if your a max condi shortbow ranger. You could never get “Disorientation” or whatever the second level of confusion could be. This would help address some of the issues where a memser may being loading (confusion 2.0) on a mob and some other mesmer throws up an ethereal field. Suddenly every arrow and bullet in the area is applying confusion hitting that 25 stack limit almost instantly. If theres a shortbow ranger or a P/P condi thief in the area suddenly you have ALOT of high condi ticking confusion. It would choke out the mesmers confusion 2.0 if it was allowed to transition fully.

As such. Creating a second tier for conditions tied to the first when it comes to condition cleanses and Limiting finishers to the first stage of the condition would help separate those invested in conditions and those who are not. Helping insulate condition players from the otherwise stifling effects of power builds that just happen to apply damaging condis.

Now. I refer mostly to bleed and confusion here as they have the highest potential of being capped in a fight. Torments applications are rare enough that only condi builds truly bring enough to cap a monster reliably. Bleeds are caused alot accidentally by power builds. And confusion through field projectile finishers.

Method 2: The removal of “accidental bleeds” from power builds and alter the effect of field finishers.

This is one im hesitant on. But it is perhaps the simplest solution. Remove traits and effects that apply bleeding passively to power focused builds. And tie them to traits that only condition focused play styles will take. Similar to the way that jagged horrors on necromancers were tied to death nova. A trait that ONLY minion mancer necromancers will bring.

This runs the risk of harming “hybrid” builds though. Forcing them to invest deaper into condition focused trait lines to round out there condi applications where otherwise they may have had 2 points left over to increase there own survivability.

Yeah, straightforward solution to PvE cap issues:

• Each target has a standard DPS for each condi stack. Every single condi that is applied will do this DPS! For PvE mobs, it should apply scaling like health (though maybe not to the same extent).
• For each hit that does condi damage, the ratio of nominal condition DPS for the skill is compared to standard DPS to get a real number X.
• The integer part of X is stacks applied.
• The fractional part of X is the probability of an additional stack.
• For DPS conditions that only stack in duration, the standard DPS is set large enough that even a condi-specced player should rarely match it; the stacks applied are capped at 1.

So, say the standard bleed DPS for a certain critter is 100 DPS.

• Condi specced player A uses a skill that inflicts 215 bleed DPS. He applies 2 stacks of bleed, and has a 15% chance of adding a third. Each will do 100 DPS.
• Non-condi specced player B uses a skill that inflicts 24 bleed DPS. He has a 24% chance of applying a bleed; if it is applied, it will do 100 DPS.

For another elite critter, with a stndard bleed DPS of 500:

• Condi specced player A uses a skill that inflicts 215 bleed DPS. He has a 43% chance of adding a bleed; if it is applied, it will do 500 DPS.
• Non-condi specced player B uses a skill that inflicts 24 bleed DPS. He has a 4.8% chance of applying a bleed; if it is applied, it will do 500 DPS.

Aside from cutting down on the amount of ticking data that the server has to account for (replacing it with one-off RNG calcs), it also means that the amount of condition damage is capped in a much more controlled way, which seems helpful for balancing purposes.

No offense perilisk, but that’s about the most bookah idea I’ve ever seen to solve the condition problem.

An easier solution is to allow players to choose minor traits as well as the Major traits. Biggest difference being that the minor traits has only 5 choices, and those 5 choices are the Adept/Master/Grandmaster minors from each skill tree. This means a power necro can drop Barbed Precision (because they’ve got crap for condi damage this way), and replace it with Gluttony, increasing their life force gain. On the other hand, a Hybrid necro could swap Furious Demise for Vampiric.

The only other solution I can see is the forceful disablement of minor, and major, traits that inflict conditions, or affect the duration of conditions (necro’s Hemophilia) if you’re character does not have at least 850 condition damage (minimum amount achieved with exotic gear that has condition damage as a minor attribute) at level 80 before food and nourishments, scaled down at lower levels appropriately. At that amount, you’re running either pure condi (with an kitten of on crit condis like a necro) or a hybrid build (like a necro can). Any less and you’re locked out.

Aidan Savage.2078:

No offense perilisk, but that’s about the most bookah idea I’ve ever seen to solve the condition problem.

An easier solution is to allow players to choose minor traits as well as the Major traits. Biggest difference being that the minor traits has only 5 choices, and those 5 choices are the Adept/Master/Grandmaster minors from each skill tree. This means a power necro can drop Barbed Precision (because they’ve got crap for condi damage this way), and replace it with Gluttony, increasing their life force gain. On the other hand, a Hybrid necro could swap Furious Demise for Vampiric.

The only other solution I can see is the forceful disablement of minor, and major, traits that inflict conditions, or affect the duration of conditions (necro’s Hemophilia) if you’re character does not have at least 850 condition damage (minimum amount achieved with exotic gear that has condition damage as a minor attribute) at level 80 before food and nourishments, scaled down at lower levels appropriately. At that amount, you’re running either pure condi (with an kitten of on crit condis like a necro) or a hybrid build (like a necro can). Any less and you’re locked out.

The idea of being able to select minor traits appeals to me. It would also encourage balancing the minor traits themselves to make sure that none of them were game changing powerful in the right builds. The idea of forceful disabling however…bothers me. Although it isn’t as though a power necro gains much from bleeding on crit.

Ive heard it discussed before about making it so that a bleed COULD NOT under any circumstances be over ridden by a lower level bleed. But a high level bleed would always over ride a lower level one before over riding one of similar strength. Regardless of how much duration is left.

Does that sound like it could work?

Aidan Savage.2078:

No offense perilisk, but that’s about the most bookah idea I’ve ever seen to solve the condition problem.

Could you be more specific as to the cons, since they’re apparently very… apparent?

perilisk.1874:

Aidan Savage.2078:

No offense perilisk, but that’s about the most bookah idea I’ve ever seen to solve the condition problem.

Could you be more specific as to the cons, since they’re apparently very… apparent?

In reading your post I can’t quite see how what your suggesting would deal with the core issue of power builds incidental condis interfering with the condis that are hte core of a condi builds playstyle

Edit: Are you suggesting that every single bleed in the game be active and applied as a separate entity?

The real answer here is to uncap Bleed, and revert it back to the old fashion where every single stack of bleed ticked independently.

Simply increase the bleeding caps based on NPC rank. 25 stacks are fine for basic enemies, but Veterans, Elites and Champions could have much higher bleeding caps (say 50 for Veterans, 100 for Elites, 200 for Champs, 500 for Legendaries and 1000 for epic NPCs)

This would also not change anything for pvp which is good.

One solution is to NOT build for ATTRITION when there are these 15-20 other players…
If you have a bunch of condi builds together, that want to do ‘damage over time’, then, collectively, you have a bunch of people that don’t mind taking a long time to kill things (and indeed they will.) The Power builds are more a part of the solution here than the problem. For other timed events, that depend on killing a lot of things in a limited amount of time, there is, again, NO reason to build for attrition. Power builds get the job done.

To me, this is just a hair away from sillies saying ‘I want to be tank/healer in dungeons’/etc. You should build for the content you’re doing, not ask to have content more favored toward a build.

I understand the frustration with thinking ‘X game mechanic is neat’ and building something up as ‘cool’ in your head and then it doesn’t work out. Is there ANY reason to make a ‘tank’ when the aggro system doesn’t support one? No not really. Is there ANY reason to build a ‘healer’ when everyone has their own heals and damage mitigation? No not really.

So then…is there ANY reason to make an ‘attrition expert’ for content that is required to be done in a timely manner AND there are 20-50+ other players around you responsible for the same objectives? I’d suggest….no not really.

Like I said, even though the idea is, ‘well I’m a type of DPS, at least’, this is still, fundamentally, the exact same thing as posting another ‘I want to be a tank/healer’ thread. Indeed, there are plenty of avenues to do all those things, but don’t expect it to be ‘efficient’ given the context.

I know I’m brash, but I’m not trying to be rude at all, just sensible. Soloing things or 1v1s in PvP/WvW are an excellent place for attrition builds to shine (even tanks/healers sometimes), but most for most GROUP oriented content, these ‘RP builds’ are gonna be mostly ‘in your head’ as the namesake would suggest. Our ‘option’ (logically) is to build efficiently for content if you want to be efficient at that content…

I wouldn’t take my WvW bunker/shout Guardian into a Speed clear Dungeon group any faster than I’d take my condi Mesmer to Tequatl for the burn zerg. Why? Because, even though these things are cool/great for what I built them for, the simple fact is, they NOT BUILT for these other areas of the game. In those places, I also run appropriate (contextuely) builds.

@Myxam: In the ‘old system’ (I assume you’re referring to GW1), you either had Bleeding on you or you didn’t. There were no ‘bleed stacks’. The were only other diverse skill synergies (which is why it had worse balance problems than GW2.) It was actually a more limited system. To balance that some skills were made uberpowerful and others worthless which lead to other problems. (Think of some of the most powerful Elites here like SF, where one skill was a ‘build’, fundementally.) I’m sure you can see the benefit they envisioned the current system having given the new game architecture. Because power builds can easily stack conditions, how stacking Might works, AND the exponential scaling of power builds, I can’t think of a single scenario (outside of just implementing a new, tyrranical system of forced roles) that would make condi builds “more competitive” and not, even more dramatically, scale the damage output of power builds. This would only further alienate ppl and/or unbalance (unbridled) power builds more than is claimed they already are. (*Note: Everyone has access to the same tools to make a power build where a power build is clearly more efficient.)

Arkinos.7245:

Simply increase the bleeding caps based on NPC rank. 25 stacks are fine for basic enemies, but Veterans, Elites and Champions could have much higher bleeding caps (say 50 for Veterans, 100 for Elites, 200 for Champs, 500 for Legendaries and 1000 for epic NPCs)

This would also not change anything for pvp which is good.

Good suggestion but then the condition damage calculation needs to be changed since bleed does more damage per stack of bleed, the more more stacks the more ekstra bleed damage.

Bleed calculation:
(0.05 * Condition Damage) + (0.5 * Level) + 2.5 per stack per second
(0.05 * Condition Damage) + 42.5 per stack per second at level 80

So at 500 stacks it will instant kill, almost like feedback did on wurm not to long ago.

The only real solution i have seen is where the overflow condi damage (more than 25 stack for most) would just be converted into raw damage, but then they need to increase the hp/toughness on most/all to work with that.

Simply raising the cap by x amount I fear wouldnt change much. And completely uncapping it would require an overhaul of nearly every champion in the game. I think alot of people underestimate just how many bleeds there are. Its to the point where a condi player might see there bleed tick ONCE in a boss fight before it dissapears swollowed by there team mates less than 100 tick bleed. Im attempting to find a method that doesn’t involve revamping nearly every single known boss to compensate.

Also its best not to confuse a condi build with an attrition build. There not necessarily the same. Many condi dps builds involve back loading damage. Layering multiple effects to eventually create something even higher than a physical damage dealers damage. A condi damage dealer focuses on raising and maintaining a specific amount of damage.

Where it differs from a physical damage dealer is usually in terms of “burst” A condi build typically builds up to one sustained “burst” losing damage only as they make mistakes or are forced to adjust to the flow of battle.

A physical damage dealers “burst” is usually front loaded. The popping of cooldowns that increase your raw damage. Or improve your crit rate. Leading up to the use of your highest immediatly damaging ability.

The two playstyles are actually much more similar to eachother than to an attrition build. Which can come in power OR condi variants. (A defensive or control focused build that provides a steady stream of damage to work through an enemies defenses one by one. The idea is to continue doing damage while keeping yourself safe through active means. The Minion Mancer is a good example. The Necro himself acts as a control bot. Slowing nad weakening the opponents ability to hurt him. While the minions deal a low but steady stream of damage.)

Example of removed condi cap: Might stacking, Berserker Engi now maintains 25+ Bleeds, 25+ Vulnerability, has access to nearly every condi option in the game, does huge amounts of AoE damage, and has access to (argueably) the most defensive options in a single Power build in the entire game. 3+ Zerker Engis becomes the new meta with with only Warrior and Ranger having anything unique to add to this build comp.

This idea would be totally sweet for maybe a day (for Power builds ironically) and then fail miserably with all the QQ threads about Engis doing 25k+ DPS…. (“Another Engi bursted me down before I even rendered him!”,etc)

Calcanius.5048:

Good suggestion but then the condition damage calculation needs to be changed since bleed does more damage per stack of bleed, the more more stacks the more ekstra bleed damage.

Bleed calculation:
(0.05 * Condition Damage) + (0.5 * Level) + 2.5 per stack per second
(0.05 * Condition Damage) + 42.5 per stack per second at level 80

Um…. wrong. Bleeds do not do more damage individually when there’s more stacks. The calculation is 0.05*CondiDamage+0.5*level+2.5 (insert obvious math stop here) per stack per second, NOT 0.05*CondiDamage+0.5*level+2.5*stack per stack per second.

The reason the formula is like that, is so that bleeds have some sort of damage at low levels (3 damage per stack per second at level 1 with 0 condition damage).

Conditions should be personal period. It is ludicrous that they haven’t fixed this kittene yet. People that are saying “attrition” and “damage over time” have no clue. Dps is dps no matter where it comes from, and right now condition builds are completely unviable because of kitten poor design not because of dps issues.

Tman.6349:

To me, this is just a hair away from sillies saying ‘I want to be tank/healer in dungeons’/etc. You should build for the content you’re doing, not ask to have content more favored toward a build.

You’re talking about a work-around for the existing problem. The thread is about a solution for the existing problem.

The current situation is one of the worst design decisions I’ve ever seen in a game. “We’re going to make this really neat condition stacking system that will provide awesome play/counterplay in PVP. We’re also going to design/adopt system architecture that will result in limits to the total number of stacks that the server can track. In situations where more than one or two players are stacking conditions, some of them will apply no (or very little) damage to their targets. We’re then going to design persistent world PvE endgame around large-scale events that dozens or scores of players will participate in together.”

For an intermediate fix, I’d use three comparatively simple changes:

• Automatically procced conditions cannot overwrite or push off actively used conditions unless the total damage is higher. Which it usually won’t be for non-specced players.
• At 25 stacks, applying any further stack which gets “pushed off” instead deals some amount of nominal damage, equal to ~1-3 seconds of the DoT.
• Confusion is an exception. At 25 stacks, any further application of Confusion instead increases the duration of all current instances by a certain amount. So a 25-stack can be maintained on a boss by a few confusion-specced players, alleviating some of the confusion-in-pve-versus-slow-attack-speed issues.

Alright. Heading to sleep at this point. When Im back ill try to edit this post in order to create a list of what ideas we could come up with before this point.

I like the idea of lesser damaging stacks not overwriting and and more powerful stacks always overriding. My other thought is any extra stacks beyond the prioritized stacks get put into a new stack of “vulnerability” to that type of condition with no regard to stats of the person creating the stack (less math load).

So if a creature has 25 stacks of bleed on it, a person with a stronger bleed thn is in the stack casts a bleed it, just overwrites the weaker bleed. If it id weaker than the stack, it gets converted into a 1% increase in damage from bleeds. That way all those weenie stacks of bleed from power builds will actually contribute to the condi builds.

Indigo, I completely agree with your evaluation/implications of the mechanics. I choose my words with purpose (above posts.) The only thing I question is*PEOPLE’S* urges/needs/desires to force presuppositions and ideas (you HAVE to admit these are psychological, ‘roleplay’ abstractions here) where they don’t work instead of using what does work in the scenario. When hanging a picture you might use a hammer and nail b/c b/c you have you’re own time to achieve your own personal accuracy. If you were to build a house, with a group of carpenters, you’d use a nail gun instead b/c of timeliness vs. output desired, ie ‘get it done or you’re fired’. (The math has been done plenty of times to suggest the personal DPS nearly evens out for most maximized scenarios.)

In the end, I don’t see these as ‘the tools not working as they should’, but rather a general negligence/disregard for the best tools and even an insistence that people should be able to build skyscrapers with a hammer and nail in an efficient manner. :/ The tools aren’t the problem. Picking the wrong tools for the task at hand is the problem. Why should these people be placated in some convoluted, contrived manner that goes against the original design?

I have 13 Exo/Asc. geared 80s made efficient (built using logic/reasoning) for the things I want to do in game. I don’ take a bunker Guardian into a speed clear dungeon run, I don’t take my zerker d/d Ele to zerg Tequatl, and I certainly wouldn’t take my condi/shatter Mesmer into huge events with tons of other players and time constrained objectives.

Once again…this is a hair away from a ‘tank/healer’ thread. O.o

I like the idea of people using power/active defense when it’s most effective and using attrition/passive defenses when/where it performs better…in the context of ‘needing to be more efficient’, as this thread implies, anyway.

Also, I have yet to see/read/hear about any solutions to this ‘problem’ that wouldn’t actually increase the dominance of might/fury stacking, power builds. Apart, from just having forced roles or deleting all options. Removing everything but Celestial gear was suggested in a different PHIW thread, which I think would be an amazing experiment for a lot of people out there…

The way I understand the issue is, the server needs to keep track of each stack’s damage amount and remaining duration. So a full stack of 25 bleeds is the limit Anet has set for the server, I assume to reduce lag, etc.

Therefore the only way Anet can fix this problem is by either updating their server technology to allow for more stacks (unlikely/more work) or remove one of the elements the server needs to keep track of, which is not really an option if they want bleeding and confusion to keep their current functionality.

I also feel that poison and burning damage suffers. Not as noticably as bleeding or confusion, but a player applying burning will have their damage spread out over a much longer period of time if they are competing with another user of burning, thereby significantly reducing their damage output (unless I have misunderstood how burning works). Anyway, for the moment I will just stick with bleeding and confusion, as they stack in intensity and tend to cause the most noticable issue.

I think part of the problem is how limited some condition builds are, in terms of the variety of condition damage available to them. For example, for a thief or necro the main bulk of their condition damage comes from bleeding. For mesmer it is confusion. Some professions however, such as engineer, elementalist and to some degree warriors, have access to more than one damaging condition to help spread their damage output across different conditions. This is not a perfect solution, but it does help to reduce the impact of other players taking up their stacks or sharing durations. The guardian suffers from shared duration more than any other as their main condition damage is from burning.

So the only solution I can think of, that doesn’t involve changing the mechanics of the conditions or updating server tech, is to provide all professions with a wide variety of ways to inflict condition damage. This would require professions like thief and necro to apply less bleeding stacks in exchange for other conditions, but it would allow them to maintain a better condition dps when fighting in groups.

At the moment, thief and necro can hit the bleed cap on their own, so just imagine how much damage they are losing when only one other condition player comes along. But if both condition builds would inflict less stacks of bleeding, but could (for example) apply confusion, burning and torment as well, they would not impact each others damage so much.

This would require Anet to look at, and change, a lot of skills and traits across most of the professions, but I feel it is the only option available all the while we have a stack limit in place.

I thought I would add a coupld of skill change examples to illustrate what I mean in my previous post.

Thief:

Death Blossom – Similar functionality, but instead of 3 stacks of bleeding it applies 1 stack of bleeding on the first hit, 1 stack of torment on the second hit and 1 stack of confusion on the third hit.

Sneak Attack – Instead of 5 stacks of bleeding it could inflict 3 bleeds 1 poison and 1 short burn.

These are just quick ideas and I am not submitting them as finished and well thought out suggestions, but I am just trying to illustrate what I mean by spreading out the condition variety.

I’d also like to add, that when running a condition build on my engineer, I do not feel the impact of other players quite as much as when running condi on my thief or necro. And I truly believe that is because the engi can apply a wider variety of damage conditions.

Often suggestied idea:

26th stack of bleeding inflicts a stack of a new condition. Most people describing this idea call that condition “Haemorrhage”. Haemorrhage does very high damage per tick, lasting x amount of time. Every time Bleeding gets to its 26th stack, another stack of Haemorrhage is applied (not refreshing existing stacks). Bleeding is also cleared on its 26th stack.

Make Haemorrhage a PvE only condition.

The ins and outs of this idea have plenty of wiggle room for ANet and has the advantage of working within the bounds of the existing Bleed cap.

dace.8019:

Often suggestied idea:

26th stack of bleeding inflicts a stack of a new condition. Most people describing this idea call that condition “Haemorrhage”. Haemorrhage does very high damage per tick, lasting x amount of time. Every time Bleeding gets to its 26th stack, another stack of Haemorrhage is applied (not refreshing existing stacks). Bleeding is also cleared on its 26th stack.

Make Haemorrhage a PvE only condition.

The ins and outs of this idea have plenty of wiggle room for ANet and has the advantage of working within the bounds of the existing Bleed cap.

While it is a nice idea, it does have some problems.

Firstly, who do you assign the Haemorrhage stack to? Players will not be happy if the haemorrhage stack does not belong to them, when they have invested so much of their build into condition damage. Secondly, how to you equate the damage and durations of the 25 bleed stacks into haemoorhage without it changing the damage for the better or worse? To make sure the haemorrhage stack remains fair and accurate the server would still need to keep track of the damage and duration of the bleed stacks, and that is where the problem lies.

All the while the server needs to keep track of damage and duration per stack, there will always be a restricted limit. Therefore the only solution I can see is to spread out the impact of this problem. Prevent it from impacting a profession’s main damage output by giving them more than one or two condition sources. It is not a complete fix, but it will help to reduce the issue.

i kind of like the idea that once the intensity limit is reached (25 stacks), that any additional “stacks” of that condition would add duration to the existing stacks. some bleeds add 20 seconds. other bleeds add 2.

but i also like the idea of allowing more classes to apply more conditions. for example, elementalist (without runes / sigils) can only apply bleeding and burning (in the way of damaging conditions. cripple and chill don’t do damage, and immobilizing a foe doesn’t damage them either (unless lightning rod is traited. cough fresh air cough), and most champions are immune to many disabling conditions.

i’d love to see, for example on ele staff, gust apply torment for 2-4 seconds, and eruption cause a poison field or smoke field after the blast. flame barrier (fire adept minor trait) could apply 2 seconds of confusion (instead of 1 second of burning) when the ele is hit in melee. the trait itself really confuses me. it’s a melee defense trait in the power line that is most often used in staff (ie ranged) builds, when most melee (dagger dagger) builds don’t spec into fire at all. yes, i know you saw what i did there. have a slice of bacon. ;-)

Forgotten Legend.9281:

i kind of like the idea that once the intensity limit is reached (25 stacks), that any additional “stacks” of that condition would add duration to the existing stacks. some bleeds add 20 seconds. other bleeds add 2.

but i also like the idea of allowing more classes to apply more conditions. for example, elementalist (without runes / sigils) can only apply bleeding and burning (in the way of damaging conditions. cripple and chill don’t do damage, and immobilizing a foe doesn’t damage them either (unless lightning rod is traited. cough fresh air cough), and most champions are immune to many disabling conditions.

i’d love to see, for example on ele staff, gust apply torment for 2-4 seconds, and eruption cause a poison field or smoke field after the blast. flame barrier (fire adept minor trait) could apply 2 seconds of confusion (instead of 1 second of burning) when the ele is hit in melee. the trait itself really confuses me. it’s a melee defense trait in the power line that is most often used in staff (ie ranged) builds, when most melee (dagger dagger) builds don’t spec into fire at all. yes, i know you saw what i did there. have a slice of bacon. ;-)

While the duration increase after max stack is reach is a nice idea, it still results in reduced condition dps unfortunately. Also, how do you decide how many stacks of each player make up the overall stack?

As to the ele, I agree. I think all professions, when built for condition damage, should have more damaging conditions available to them.

Rin.1046:

Firstly, who do you assign the Haemorrhage stack to?

To everyone who contributed at least 1 of the 26 stacks of bleeding. Just because there’s nothing in the game that shows shared ticks at present doesn’t mean it can’t be put in place. The immediate bandwidth saving of 25 stacks to 1 stack (shared by a max of 26 players, but more likely much less) will still result in bandwidth gains for ANet.

Another solution would be just to show the tick to everyone above the targets head, whether they contributed or not, so long as anything that tracks contributions knows the actual ownership (less computing required for this).

Rin.1046:

Secondly, how to you equate the damage and durations of the 25 bleed stacks into haemoorhage without it changing the damage for the better or worse? To make sure the haemorrhage stack remains fair and accurate the server would still need to keep track of the damage and duration of the bleed stacks, and that is where the problem lies.

The Haemorrhage can use the data that was current at 26th Bleed stack. It would take less computation to work out the damage that the 26 stacks would do if their modifiers were assumed to be the same for the sum of all the stacks durations than tracking all that, per tick, per player, per buff, per second and re-computing the ticks for the normal stack.

Like I said, there’s wiggle room for technical compromises. Even if Haemorrhage did less (by making general assumptions, say) damage than the 25 stacks would have done, the promise of inflicting the Haemorrhage PLUS a new set of stacks (and repeatedly) would easily offset the complaints as condition users would actually serve a purpose in events (instead of just scaling them up beyond their contribution) and in dungeons (where they be capable of inflicting much more damage on mobs than they can currently in most circumstances).

I just posted an idea on these forums, basically I said that they need to make bleed work more like burning and poison, stack in duration. Also the more time is left on the bleed, the more damage it does, still making it “stack” in capacity, all bleeds should have their duration shortened though. So after stacking it you’d have 25 secs of bleeding left on the target, dealing more damage than at the start, where there would be 5 seconds left.

This way, condi builds would start of with medium damage, but the longer they can whack their opponents, the more damage they do, overpowering power builds after a certain time. Making them better at long lasting fights, but less of a ideal build at short fight. Seems to fit the condition “mentality” of outlasting your oponent.

Oh, and this way maybe speedclears would still be ideal with power builds, but world bosses might actually be downed with condi builds, since they would be more ideal for it.

Shadelang.3012:

perilisk.1874:

Aidan Savage.2078:

No offense perilisk, but that’s about the most bookah idea I’ve ever seen to solve the condition problem.

Could you be more specific as to the cons, since they’re apparently very… apparent?

In reading your post I can’t quite see how what your suggesting would deal with the core issue of power builds incidental condis interfering with the condis that are hte core of a condi builds playstyle

Edit: Are you suggesting that every single bleed in the game be active and applied as a separate entity?

Huh? No, I’m suggesting keeping the existing caps, which are apparently for technical rather than balance reasons, and use the power of statistics to completely eliminate a lot of the incidental condition applications.

Basically, when someone tries to throw a crappy bleed that does 5% of the DPS that a condition-specced player would do, there is a 95% chance it won’t be applied at all. In the 5% of time that it is applied, it has the same strength as a condition applied by a condition-focused player, so on average it is still doing the same damage. That should reduce the amount of rebalancing necessary.

Any easy solution would be for the Dev’s to give us more choice in our builds. As the OP mentioned, most of this bleed issue comes from traits that we’re pretty much forced into having. The game should have been set up with us having a choice to go full condi, full dps, or blending in between. Forcing us to do a little of everything is a large part of the problem.

dace.8019:

…Even if Haemorrhage did less (by making general assumptions, say) damage than the 25 stacks would have done, the promise of inflicting the Haemorrhage PLUS a new set of stacks (and repeatedly) would easily offset the complaints…

This is true, and if Anet could make it work without adding extra strain on the server then it could make the situation a lot better. I’m just not convinced it could be done without adding more strain on the servers. For one thing you would still have the normal bleed stacks AND the haemorrhage stacks.

That said I am no network programmer, or any kind of programmer for that matter, so I do not know much about these things. So if it could work then it is a good suggestion.

Tman.6349:

Example of removed condi cap: Might stacking, Berserker Engi now maintains 25+ Bleeds, 25+ Vulnerability, has access to nearly every condi option in the game, does huge amounts of AoE damage, and has access to (argueably) the most defensive options in a single Power build in the entire game. 3+ Zerker Engis becomes the new meta with with only Warrior and Ranger having anything unique to add to this build comp.

This idea would be totally sweet for maybe a day (for Power builds ironically) and then fail miserably with all the QQ threads about Engis doing 25k+ DPS…. (“Another Engi bursted me down before I even rendered him!”,etc)

Condi caps shouldn’t be removed, only raised for ranked npcs based on rank.
The exact numbers should be worked out by anet, its their game after all, but the basic principle would be easy and not affect pvp at all.

Since players are not ranked targets, nothing would change.

If absolutely necessary, the base damage on bleeds could be reduced in favor of better condi scaling.

Tman.6349:

Indigo, I completely agree with your evaluation/implications of the mechanics. I choose my words with purpose (above posts.) The only thing I question is*PEOPLE’S* urges/needs/desires to force presuppositions and ideas (you HAVE to admit these are psychological, ‘roleplay’ abstractions here) where they don’t work instead of using what does work in the scenario. When hanging a picture you might use a hammer and nail b/c b/c you have you’re own time to achieve your own personal accuracy. If you were to build a house, with a group of carpenters, you’d use a nail gun instead b/c of timeliness vs. output desired, ie ‘get it done or you’re fired’. (The math has been done plenty of times to suggest the personal DPS nearly evens out for most maximized scenarios.)

The last I’d seen, Nike had presented data that the DPS of the best fully maxed condition spec was less than the best fully maxed power spec by at least a couple of thousand DPS. Has that changed?

In the end, I don’t see these as ‘the tools not working as they should’, but rather a general negligence/disregard for the best tools and even an insistence that people should be able to build skyscrapers with a hammer and nail in an efficient manner. :/ The tools aren’t the problem. Picking the wrong tools for the task at hand is the problem. Why should these people be placated in some convoluted, contrived manner that goes against the original design?

Under the current circumstances, I believe that also. It kind of kittens me off, though.

I have 13 Exo/Asc. geared 80s made efficient (built using logic/reasoning) for the things I want to do in game. I don’ take a bunker Guardian into a speed clear dungeon run, I don’t take my zerker d/d Ele to zerg Tequatl, and I certainly wouldn’t take my condi/shatter Mesmer into huge events with tons of other players and time constrained objectives.

Once again…this is a hair away from a ‘tank/healer’ thread. O.o

I offer no warranties about the efficacy of the solutions offered by players. Some of them are better than others, but the best I’ve seen so far would require the current condition system to be scrapped in favor of the more common DoT system from other games, and I believe that to be a non-starter.

On the other hand, I see little harm in people brainstorming. You never know when a good suggestion might appear, and it’s a not likely that ANet would abandon its current condition design to implement something that’s completely broken.

Edit: After all, while tank/healer is a problem with player perceptions, the condition system as is in large-scale PvE involves a numerical issue that is readily verifiable, and thus objectively present.

The biggest problem with fixing condition damage is that it really requires a complete overhaul of the entire gear/stat system at the ground level.

Condition Damage should never have been a stat. Duration is OK, as are traits that increase damage.
Each player should only be able to apply one “stack” of each condition.
All values (damage per tick, duration, application method, etc.) would all need to be redone to balance.

These changes, while MAJOR, would resolve the condition problem. You’d still gear for Power for DPS, but would trait for conditions if you wanted to play a condition spec. Condition damage should be supplemental to the build, not the build itself.

Rin.1046:

The way I understand the issue is, the server needs to keep track of each stack’s damage amount and remaining duration. So a full stack of 25 bleeds is the limit Anet has set for the server, I assume to reduce lag, etc.

Therefore the only way Anet can fix this problem is by either updating their server technology to allow for more stacks (unlikely/more work) or remove one of the elements the server needs to keep track of, which is not really an option if they want bleeding and confusion to keep their current functionality.

I also feel that poison and burning damage suffers. Not as noticably as bleeding or confusion, but a player applying burning will have their damage spread out over a much longer period of time if they are competing with another user of burning, thereby significantly reducing their damage output (unless I have misunderstood how burning works). Anyway, for the moment I will just stick with bleeding and confusion, as they stack in intensity and tend to cause the most noticable issue.

I think part of the problem is how limited some condition builds are, in terms of the variety of condition damage available to them. For example, for a thief or necro the main bulk of their condition damage comes from bleeding. For mesmer it is confusion. Some professions however, such as engineer, elementalist and to some degree warriors, have access to more than one damaging condition to help spread their damage output across different conditions. This is not a perfect solution, but it does help to reduce the impact of other players taking up their stacks or sharing durations. The guardian suffers from shared duration more than any other as their main condition damage is from burning.

So the only solution I can think of, that doesn’t involve changing the mechanics of the conditions or updating server tech, is to provide all professions with a wide variety of ways to inflict condition damage. This would require professions like thief and necro to apply less bleeding stacks in exchange for other conditions, but it would allow them to maintain a better condition dps when fighting in groups.

At the moment, thief and necro can hit the bleed cap on their own, so just imagine how much damage they are losing when only one other condition player comes along. But if both condition builds would inflict less stacks of bleeding, but could (for example) apply confusion, burning and torment as well, they would not impact each others damage so much.

This would require Anet to look at, and change, a lot of skills and traits across most of the professions, but I feel it is the only option available all the while we have a stack limit in place.

just gonna leave this post here.

Here is an idea which should only use reasonable amount of new calculations server-side (IMO) while solving the bleed stacking.

Once the creature has 25 stacks of bleed on it, the bleeds are wiped and the new condition is added (call it whatever you want, say ‘deep wound’). The condition is set to do same amount of damage as the 25 stacks of bleed would (calculation will be required here), over the average amount of time bleeds would last (another calculation, might do a slightly more complicated one and weight the remaining times so that average DPS is preserved better).

After that you can stack another 25 stacks of bleed. If you cap again, just add another stack of new conditions. Even if new conditions are capped to 10, this is still effectively 250 bleed stacks on boss. Immediately solves all the group problems (and even marginally allows multiple condition builds), and somewhat reduces the boss problems.

In fact, if this calculation is not overly intensive, you can lower the bleed stacks to 10, add 10 stacks of new condition, and then 10 more stacks of 3rd tier condition. Call them bleed → deep wound → gashing wound. 1000 worth of bleed stacks. And at the same time the server only needs to keep track of only 30 stacks of dots.

I still plan to go back and make that post I mentioned earlier. However i just got home and read over these posts and wanted to adress a few.

Firstly. My purpose for making this post was to deal with the chocking of an entire play style in the PvE game mode.

Secondly. My goal is to find a method that does not require a massive overhaul to nearly every boss that exists today. So heavy handed methods like removing the base cap does not fit my original goal as that would produce an incredibly high amount of “extra” dps.

Thirdly: My goal is NOT to make condition builds stronger in any way shape or form. Mearly to allow them to actually make use of the strength they already have. In example my original suggestion while involving the creation of “new” conditions in relation to there condition power did not infact improve there current theoretical dps. Mearly gave them a…different sandbox to play in that was currently being over used by there power focused brethren. In essence Condi focused players would damage in one location. And power focused builds and there accidental bleeds would damage in the other. After all competition between dpsers isn’t something I want to get rid of entirely.

Moving on from there: I saw several ideas that could theoretically work. I also saw several that would require the massive overhaul I want to avoid.

One of the biggest issues ive seen is that many people simply dont realize just how many bleeds are pumped out in a boss fight. Even something as small as a 5 man boss will probably have permanent 25 stacks of bleed with 5 power users in the group.

There are so many bleeds in this game that I fear a cap of some kind is absolutely necessary unless A-Net is willing to go the heavy handed route and remove accidental bleeds as a mechanic that is available to.

On that note and continuing the conversation forward. I did see someone post on the idea of scaling chance for conditions being applied that got me thinking. So I ask this. (What if traits, effects that applied ACCIDENTAL damaging conditions scaled with condition damage? Leaving them quite low chances of happening (less than 10%) for non condition users. But very for high condition based people.) <— I received this idea after reading Perilisks posts.

This thread has done quite well so far in generating ideas. I ask that people look at other players ideas in comparison with there own. And attempt to compare the too. If you see another players idea that interests you. Please speak up. And well see if we cant find one or three we can begin refining.

Id vote to have one for each of the following categories.

One: Overhauling the condition mechanic itself. (reworking how condition damage itself is calculated in some way shape or form)

Two: Changing the nature of conditions (creating a new condition in an attempt to seperate accidental bleeds from the bleeds of a condition player. Or creating a mechanic to allow (excess) bleeds to do some damage (I do not like that last part I will be honest. I fear that any such mechanic would be inherently weaker in most situations that applying a “true” bleed)

Three: Reworking the existing number of conditions (this is the brute force method. Force bleeds and the like to be something you need to CHOOSE to bring. Not something you do accidentally)

They could rework the way condi stacks work altogether and go for potency instead of quantity, as well as how condi cleansing works.

Its too kitten servers to track countless stacks? Lets say each person can only apply up to 3 stacks of any one condition, and the server tracks per-character applications.

Bob the Necromancer’s ‘Blood is Power’ bleed lasts for 1m18s and does 22k damage over that interval? Lets make Blood is Power throw 1 stack to do that. The self-bleed BiP throws on the necromancer can then be shunted right onto the enemy via dagger or staff 4; there’s one more stack. Bob has one more stack of Bleed he can apply. If he’s using a Scepter, as any good condi necro probably should be, his auto attack will normally spam a bleed, as will crits if he’s traited into that, so that all needs to be reworked entirely.

No more spamming conditions on auto attacks. Make conditions a tactical choice, not an also-ran along with spammable straight damage. Remove ALL condi spam altogether, but make the active conditions more powerful.

As for cleansing them, the current methods of cleansing conditions are pretty available and fairly convenient for many – its pretty easy to wipe out a good number of conditions consistently on several classes.

Do away with that. Make condition removal a much more tactical thing rather than have signets removing a condition every 10s (or even 8s on particularly traited guardians). Tie condition removal to the active use of abilities, and make choosing to prefer an ability that cleanses conditions matter by making conditions themselves scary things to ignore.

Right now, a zerg in WvW can safely ignore conditions out of hand because cleansing is so available and anything that would normally be scary when stacked is almost certainly going to be cleansed before it matters much, if not over-written by crappier iterations of the same condition knocking bigger, badder stacks off.

So, they should do away with overwriting stacks altogether, reduce the number of stacks an individual can place on a specific target to something far more manageable, make conditions just plain hit harder but have shorter durations and remove some of the passive and even active condition-clearing abilities.

Conditions should be every bit as scary as direct damage, from a slightly different angle. If they’re debilitating, they should be debilitating in ways you cannot just ignore for 2 seconds and get over it. If they’re damaging, it should be no safer to ignore them than it is to ignore a straight dps build popping its burst chain in your face.

In my opinion, Anet made conditions and cleanses too available and too spammable. Reel it all back. Make a condition build terrifying because whatever it nails with its conditions WILL BE A HURTING UNIT until or unless its cleansed. Make choosing to slot skills that cleanse conditions more attractive options even if its just one cleanse on your active heal, because that might very well be the cleanse that saves you from eating a 28k bleed or being Feared for 10s or being Poisoned for 12k dmg over 1 minute, or being Dazed, Confused or Stunned for 10s, Chilled for 12s or afflicted with Weakness for 10s.

Conditions should be frightening things to have to try to work through, but as Anet’s implemented them, a great many can just be flat out ignored. Throwing things like 1 second fear as the 6th tier power on a armor rune set? Foolish. Throwing things like Poison for 3s on things? What the heck even is that?

Chilled for 2s? At least things like Daze even for 1s will interrupt something, but a great many of the spammable conditions, especially things like all the Bleeds, are pitiful little dots that don’t get significantly better even on a condition build and aren’t significant factors for a lot on the power builds they frequently occur in as unavoidable bleed-on-crit auto traits and similar.

Take all the passive conditions right out. All of them. Every single one. Remove all passive condition cleansing; every single bit of it. Make damaging conditions act faster, as even a 28k bleed is pretty ignorable when that 28k is spread out over a minute and a half. Shorten that to 28k over 20s and its not ignorable anymore – its downright terrifying and you will want to get that off you if you at all can.

It’d take some fiddling, and I wouldn’t advocate for an over-correction that would make conditions OP. Some of my ideas here might, if taken literally as they’re brainstormingly jotted, might very well be OP – don’t take the numbers as gospel, look at the concepts.

They’re the only relevant bits anyway.

Aidan Savage.2078:

just gonna leave this post here.

Interesting idea, Aidan. I can see how that would significantly improve the issue with non-condi builds taking the dps away from the condi builds. Essentially it will ‘dead head’ the weaker bleeds and resort to make bleeds more efficient. I think out of the ideas I’ve read so far, that is one of the best ones.

However, there will still be the issue of condi builds competing with each other. Certainly not to the extent it is now, but I think it will always happen, even with my suggestion. All the while there is a stack limit condition builds will be competing against each other in large groups.

Another thing to consider is, the moment you make condi builds more effective the more players that will create condi builds, which in turn will increase the competition. Whatever solution Anet comes up with, has to take into account what happens when more players start to use condition damage.

Personally, I think that unless we can find a way to elimitate the stack limit, or change how conditions work so there is no need for a limit, there will always be an issue when large groups of players get together. However, removing the unintentional competition, from power builds, would be a noticable improvement.

I hope Anet are still looking into this and are taking some of these ideas on board.

There are a lot of ideas for fixing condition damage in PvE. A lot of really good ideas. And a lot of posts that I’ve read say the culprit is power builds that apply conditions incidentally with their traits or skills. While I don’t think this is untrue, what if the power builds applying more stacks of bleeds, burns and poisons help the condition builds work toward an effect that will benefit them instead?

I like someone’s idea of bleeds applying their damage immediately when the cap of 25 is reached. Preferably (in my opinion) the earliest application being dealt first to give more chances for the bleeds to run their course naturally. This would benefit both because those 15 stacks of power-build bleeds are pushing the 10 stacks of condition build bleed closer to the edge where their damage will be immediately applied, reducing the ‘ramp-up’ time.

Another idea I’ve seen suggested is when a bleed stack reaches 25 the entire stack is removed and dealt as a chunk of damage. It’s similar to the bleed overflow above, but perhaps too bursty?

The hemorrhage/gash/wound idea is brought up often. Perhaps instead of consolidating all bleeds into one stack, the debuff lasts a duration (10-15 seconds?) and for that time all existing and newly applied bleeds have their duration halved and their damage doubled (or thirded and tripled, quartered and quadrupled. Whichever works best). This doesn’t allow power builds to help as much, but it does make bleeds far more potent once that cap is reached. The lower the duration the less the bleeds will trip over one another and in addition the higher their dps will be.

The same could be done for Burn and Poison; when it reaches a certain duration the burn speed is increased. I’m not sure if this is as big of an issue as I don’t often check the duration of burns on champions. If they do indeed reach 2 or 3 minutes then I’d be in favor of Ignite and Blight debuffs that result in faster burns and poisons.

I think the larger issue at hand people need to consider is that trying to fix the system so it works in open world 100% is a venture doomed to failure. If you can fix the system so that it works 100% of the time in dungeons and fractals, you’ve just made the system more effective by several factors, even if it’s only 10% more effective in open world. Honestly, viability in open world is less important than it is in dungeons and fractals, due to the inherent need for champions and higher to have resistance to conditions to offset increased caps.

As a result, that’s why I linked my thread about “fixing” the damage calculation and then extending that into a system that prevents overwriting of conditions. Simply put, at full stacks, only the lowest damage stack is overwritten IF the incoming stack does more damage than the lowest stack (same or lower, it gets ignored like the “i want mounts” thread people). Anyways, I linked my post a few posts up, cant fish the link again since I gotta get off for work.

Other than the issues with stacking, I believe one of the major problems with condition balance is the design of Poison. Poison originally stacked in intensity, but was changed to stack in Duration. This works fine for Burning because it’s high-damage and low-duration, but it’s bad for Poison, which is the opposite.

In short, this had the effect of minimizing its damage aspect and emphasizing the control aspect. This means that it’s about as potent in a non-condition build as it is in a condition build. I don’t see that as a good thing. This probably is what ultimately led to them introducing Torment as a way to give more variety to condition builds.

It either needs to stack in intensity or be redesigned altogether. It should be of middling value outside of a condition build and should be very strong with a condition build. At the very least, it needs to do the damage of 3 bleed stacks instead of 2. Or it just needs to scale much better with condition damage – either just the damage portion or both the damage and healing reduction.

I have to say Aidan has a point here. It probably isn’t possible at this point in time to guarantee that every condi user in a 40 man zerg will be able to max out his damage. But at this point in time there are very FEW condi users relative to there power counterparts.

Changing things so that only those that have actually invested in there relative conditions have the possibility of applying there damage sources would help give people return for there commitment to the playstyle. It would encourage having atleast a few condition focused players in even boss environments. Now if conditions become a popular thing in PvE more reworks could be required. But at this point id like for atleast the POSSIBILITY of someone who dedicates his entire build to the condition playstyle to get some amount of effectiveness from it. Because as the situation is now. That possibility is very close to zero.

Einlanzer.1627:

Other than the issues with stacking, I believe one of the major problems with condition balance is the design of Poison. Poison originally stacked in intensity, but was changed to stack in Duration. This works fine for Burning because it’s high-damage and low-duration, but it’s bad for Poison, which is the opposite.

In short, this had the effect of minimizing its damage aspect and emphasizing the control aspect. This means that it’s about as potent in a non-condition build as it is in a condition build. I don’t see that as a good thing. This probably is what ultimately led to them introducing Torment as a way to give more variety to condition builds.

It either needs to stack in intensity or be redesigned altogether. It should be of middling value outside of a condition build and should be very strong with a condition build. At the very least, it needs to do the damage of 3 bleed stacks instead of 2. Or it just needs to scale much better with condition damage – either just the damage portion or both the damage and healing reduction.

As far as poison goes turning it into a stacking condition isn’t really going to help it in pve as far as condition players go. ATM much like burning the highest damaging application of poison will tick. Guaranteeing a condi focused player will get credit. Now theoretically the highest ticking poison comes in the hands of the poison master ranger. So if a condi focused poison master ranger fights he will ALWAYS get the damage from that poison unless there is a similarly built ranger nearby.

If we turn poison into a stackable condition. it just becomes the same exact problem I made this thread to try to deal with. Itl get overrun by power users that just happen to apply poison. And actual condition users will get little to no benefit from investing in it.

Shadelang.3012:

Einlanzer.1627:

Other than the issues with stacking, I believe one of the major problems with condition balance is the design of Poison. Poison originally stacked in intensity, but was changed to stack in Duration. This works fine for Burning because it’s high-damage and low-duration, but it’s bad for Poison, which is the opposite.

In short, this had the effect of minimizing its damage aspect and emphasizing the control aspect. This means that it’s about as potent in a non-condition build as it is in a condition build. I don’t see that as a good thing. This probably is what ultimately led to them introducing Torment as a way to give more variety to condition builds.

It either needs to stack in intensity or be redesigned altogether. It should be of middling value outside of a condition build and should be very strong with a condition build. At the very least, it needs to do the damage of 3 bleed stacks instead of 2. Or it just needs to scale much better with condition damage – either just the damage portion or both the damage and healing reduction.

As far as poison goes turning it into a stacking condition isn’t really going to help it in pve as far as condition players go. ATM much like burning the highest damaging application of poison will tick. Guaranteeing a condi focused player will get credit. Now theoretically the highest ticking poison comes in the hands of the poison master ranger. So if a condi focused poison master ranger fights he will ALWAYS get the damage from that poison unless there is a similarly built ranger nearby.

If we turn poison into a stackable condition. it just becomes the same exact problem I made this thread to try to deal with. Itl get overrun by power users that just happen to apply poison. And actual condition users will get little to no benefit from investing in it.

No, I agree. It actually makes more sense to re-balance the damage and healing reduction aspect than it does to make it stack intensity.

Agreed. But that may be better for an alternate post. If we as a community can agree with a solution and see if we cant get some red post feedback on it I intend to make posts to deal with issues of non stacking conditions as well (which are currently a "whoever gives up the most gets it) kind of thing which I am PERSONALLY 100% okay with (I play a burning guardian >.> <.<) but I want to start with the issue of the more critical aspects of the standard condition builds first.