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?
(edited by DavyMcB.1603)