Guild Wars 2

First off, I play all classes, each is fully geared, my main is mesmer and it’s not condi spec. So I don’t think I’m being biased.

K?

Ok, so I think we all know that condition is quite subpar in PvP because of the overloads of cleansing that are in the game. Some classes got them more than others do (Hi ele, war and don’t be sad engi). The thing is I feel like, the way things work as of now, cleanses greatly counter condition. Why? When a condi specs wants to ram up condi damage, since the damage itself is gimpy to begin with, they have to stack a lot of conditions (either intensity wise or duration wise). This process may require the class to use 3-4 skills or more to even put some pressure on the enemies. Now, with specs that have high frequency of condi application like engi and clone mes, that is quite alright. But for other spec like burn gd or even necro, they are at disadvantages. Necro’s condi is usually very slow to build up stacks and we all know that duration dosen’t help much for intensity-based condi. If the necro wants to burst condi, he has to use Staff#2, Staff#3, Dark path, Dhuumfire, and maybe scepter#2 and #5. And the problem is that all those stacks of bleeds could be vanished in a single water attunement swap. Is this fair? I don’t even have to give an example for burn GD, do I? Then some of you would ask why burst them all together just to get cleansed, but what are you gonna do? keep spamming that scepter#1 and hope that the enemy will waste condi cleanse while he’s burst 10k+ meditation combo on you? Or use you as ping pong ball with turrets and rifle?

Key point, I think condi cleanse should clear conditions by reducing stacks and/or duration of condition damage.

Pros:
1. This will make cleansing require just as much investment as condition damage. If a trap ranger successfully blows all his skills to ram up 20 stacks of bleeds. The enemy SHOULD BE penalized for that, not springing back up with instant condi flush in 1 second; e.g. a spamable Cleansing Ire should reduce maybe just 10 stacks of bleed, 5 stacks of poison, 2 stacks of burning, etc.. you get the idea.

2. With this mechanic, each condi cleanse is no longer homogeneous. You can control which cleanses should be more powerful than other cleanses based also on their effectiveness not just numbers of cleanses — i.e. creating more depth for the mechanic.

2.1 You can also control which cleanses should prioritize what kind of conditions

3. Allowing specs with low frequency(but high stacks) of condition application to be more relevant and meaningful in competitive games.

3.2 Putting conditions and their counters on the same plain — i.e. conditions come in stack and duration, cleanses should also come in stacks and duration NOT a clean-them-all trigger. (This is pretty much Pro#1 but from different perspective).

4.(Add) This will also create cutoff points for people who put effort into building up conditions on enemies from people who simply benefit from having a few stacks here and there for extra damage. The cleansing should reflect this — e.g. people who manage to successfully land 20 bleeds should not receive the same counter as people who put 5-10 bleeds.

Con
Well, it’s a nerf to condi cleanses, but I think it’s for the better and careful adjustment needs to be considered, of course.

What do you think?

DavyMcB.1603:

Key point, I think condi cleanse should clear conditions by reducing stacks and/or duration of condition damage.

I am not much into condi application but I main warrior built for roaming and condi cleansing. From the defensive point of view, this looks like an interesting idea, even though it would probably have to involve alot of rebalancing. But considering that they are doing that anyway for HoT, I think it would be a good idea to at least take a better look at it.

I disagree. Many of the strongest condition classes have ways which quite literally make some of the damage unavoidable. Additionally, the strongest conditions in the game are already difficult to remove as some classes/builds did not get updates to actually allow their removal (thief) when these were implemented.

The main reasoning behind why medi guards, shoutbow/hambow war and celestial eles are so popular is because of their condition cleansing. The reason behind why guards and eles are taken in WvW blobs is because of their AoE cleansing. Without cleansing being so high, strictly speaking, there is literally zero reason mathematically to play anything else but condi builds, because they actually deal more and more consistent damage in most PvP environments. This especially holds true for WvW.

Actually, the reasoning behind why engineers are playable in PvP has largely to do with their ability to flood conditions all at once or sustain them without changing much. The same with mesmers. Necros don’t see much condi play since their diversity is rather poor, and they lack access to the best conditions or very high stacking with shotrt durations/cooldowns.

If anything, your suggestion will only promote more hatred/direct countering towards condition builds. Usually anything I do in sPvP runs as many cleanses as physically possible because dealing with condition classes without maxing out just proves too difficult. I certainly know with the incoming trait changes I’m shifting to even more condition hatred. I’d honestly give up my heal to cleanse conditions on some classes.

Your suggestion would also require the removal of condi duration food (both + and -) from WvW. Otherwise it doesn’t end up resolving anything.

DeceiverX.8361:

I disagree. Many of the strongest condition classes have ways which quite literally make some of the damage unavoidable. Additionally, the strongest conditions in the game are already difficult to remove as some classes/builds did not get updates to actually allow their removal (thief) when these were implemented.

The main reasoning behind why medi guards, shoutbow/hambow war and celestial eles are so popular is because of their condition cleansing. The reason behind why guards and eles are taken in WvW blobs is because of their AoE cleansing. Without cleansing being so high, strictly speaking, there is literally zero reason mathematically to play anything else but condi builds, because they actually deal more and more consistent damage in most PvP environments. This especially holds true for WvW.

Actually, the reasoning behind why engineers are playable in PvP has largely to do with their ability to flood conditions all at once or sustain them without changing much. The same with mesmers. Necros don’t see much condi play since their diversity is rather poor, and they lack access to the best conditions or very high stacking with shotrt durations/cooldowns.

If anything, your suggestion will only promote more hatred/direct countering towards condition builds. Usually anything I do in sPvP runs as many cleanses as physically possible because dealing with condition classes without maxing out just proves too difficult. I certainly know with the incoming trait changes I’m shifting to even more condition hatred. I’d honestly give up my heal to cleanse conditions on some classes.

Your suggestion would also require the removal of condi duration food (both + and -) from WvW. Otherwise it doesn’t end up resolving anything.

I don’t see why my suggestion would require the removal of those. Anyway, a person who invests heavily in condi building (stack or duration) should be rewarded for it when they successfully land damage. It makes no sense for condi specs to have to get through all those pre-emptive mitigation like dodging, blocking, invul, etc. only to have their damage removed again. Well.. not all in one blow.

Compare this to DPS. As of now, when you land conditions and go up against cleansers. You end up dealing no damage. None. All those stacks you built. Gone. This is incoherent. If you take a look at DPS perspective, when you get heavily bursted, there presents some challenges on getting back on your feet due to limited healing. Strictly fundamentally speaking, this is basically the same as condi cleanse. Both are reactive, but the latter prevent your hp from going down instead of raising it back up. HOWEVER, while both serve as survival tools, healing is MUCH MUCH more limited than condi cleanses. This skews the system toward DPS because it is much more effective to use as method to defeating other player. If you get kill shot for 15k, you might be able to only heal back up for 5k so it nets 10k damage. If a necro burst 15 bleeds (that would require at least 3-4 skills), the stacks could all end up being cleansed in 1 sec from Cleansing Ire and it might just dealt maybe 2-3k damage before that (supposing the warrior only clean once and not using any other cleanses along the way, which is very unlikely). The necro damage is then set back to 0. Does this sound fair to you?

I’m not raising this point just to randomly boost condition. But I’m pointing out the reason why, all things the same, condition specs will NEVER beat DPS. It’s because the system does not allow it to be the most optimal build even just for an option. And this is majorly the reason. Because the way conditions and their counters currently work. It is broken.

Of course I don’t expect them to change this tomorrow. This change would reckon massive overhaul on condition. But I think it will lay a better foundation of a mechanic. Yes, it will make condi specs stronger overall and some current ones might be outright OP. But that’s the point of rebalancing.

The point is to create spectrum on countering condition and span out the degree of rewards/penalty for people who invest heavily in condition/cleanses and people who do not. It is the same as why DPS deal less damage to people who choose to invest in toughness and more damage to those who do not

Edited> If you consider my point more carefully, you will also see that this system will improve smaller scale fight while not really having much affect on large scale fights if any. If there are 3 GDs and your party who are capable of removing 10 bleeds each. That would net AoE 30 bleeds removal. Functionality remains the same. Out of party, of course, it’s less effective but that’s the whole point. As of now, condimancers have ZERO role in wvw. Is this supposed to make sense to you? But in smaller scale like PvP. It will allow rooms for condimancers to be more meaningful to the fight.

It also makes no sense for condition builds to deal more damage to full tanks than full DPS, and the similar damage back to DPS classes while using inherently tankier builds or even as absurdly tanky builds like dire gear while also getting the full benefits of control condition duration or cleanses used on control conditions rather than DPS ticks, or scaling damage per attack dealt back to the caster via confusion with said extra durability, etc.

Here’s the thing about conditions: if you don’t cleanse them, they deal more damage than full DPS. Yes, they can be shut down immediately, but if they couldn’t, then there would be zero reason to use power builds in any PvP scenario.

A lot of condition generation is very unpredictable or difficult to escape from. I’d love to see you avoid every application of torment or permanently cleanse conditions coming from a scepter MH mesmer. I can load someone with 1m+ long bleeds from a necro by transferring out BiP with no tell. There are only a few skills in the game that deal direct damage that cannot be predicted or seen.

You act as though conditions are underpowered. They’re not. Again, the reasoning behind why they’re not played extensively is because they’re so powerful the only builds that find themselves viable are ones which run an extreme excess of condition cleanses. You can’t argue they’ll never be viable without buffing them on the sheer basis that an entire rework is needed of the condition system in general that doesn’t stem from buffing because they’re already too strong. There’s a reason the majority of small-scale/solo roam builds in WvW are condition builds. It’s because they’re inherently stronger and easier to play with fewer counter-play opportunities. This is especially apparent with dire/perplex, which doesn’t exist in sPvP because it’s just too strong to be even considered balanced.

If they removed +/- food and remove dire gear from the game, increased cleansing on the classes that do not have good cleansing as to let those classes not just die instantly to condi bombs, and rework every existing class and cleanse that exists by examining base health : condition cleanse access to all builds class-wide,, make all classes have the same access to the same conditions and the stack count under all condition builds, and re-tool these to make this allow condition users to create consistency in kill speed no matter what target they’re against by toughness values and class, MAYBE it will find itself balance.

The thing is, that conditions will never be balanced in PvP environments for as long as all of these are variable by class. But then, making them identical removes build/class diversity and then you’re mix-maxing my traits and utility use creating an environment where only one build on one class can be considered optimal.

As for condimancers having “zero role in WvW,” this is only true in blobbing. Otherwise, the terrorperplex necro is one of the strongest roaming/small scale builds currently in WvW due to its absolutely insane control potential, boon corruption, and ridiculous damage outputs while running full durability in dire with death shroud.

And for those who don’t have cleanses? Thief as a class only has cleansing from a trait in a trait line that does nothing and actually punishes skilled thieves. Otherwise it literally cannot cleanse more than one condition at a time at the cost of all of its initiative, it must pick if it wants to cleanse control of DoT conditions (it cannot do both), and cannot cleanse confusion, torment or vuln anywhere. Meanwhile this also suffers from the lowest HP pool in the game meaning the damage per tick means more to its max HP than every other class.

There is no reason for punishing classes or builds so heavily for not bringing a cleanse. That already exists extremely heavily in the game. Again, anyone who doesn’t bring a cleanse against a condi user pretty much straight up loses the fight, even with good evades, because the major attacks like Killshot, backstab, mind wrack, etc. are what win fights for power builds. The attacks from condition users don’t mean much individually and thus can’t be fully avoided while racking up huge DoT and control effects.

Maybe if an entire system rework was performed this idea could work. But then why bother going through that trouble to rework the system and not just balance the application/cleansing abilities themselves?