Guild Wars 2

I play with a great group of people and regularly go hunting/Dungeons together and we all have our own favourite classes.. Myself a Condition Thief, And my friends a Mesmer, Ranger, Necromancer and 2 Warriors.

The problem is that we find it increasingly pointless for us to play as a group due to the fact that many of us use condition damage and the cap is reached so easily that makes the other condition players nothing more than spectators during boss fights!
Its like having a 5000 damage limit on a monster that ticks down slowly, so the first burst damage hit will get the 5000 hit credit and as it ticks down all other hits will build it back up to the 5000 damage limit (100 damage, 200 damage etc… ) no matter how hard you hit!

This seems to be a major problem with making groups (Already on my server i have read many dungeon groups advertising 1 cd damage player per group) but never (1 burst damage player per group please …
With so many of the builds/classes built around condition damage ( Cond Thieves, Rangers, necros, Mesmers) seems strange that working in groups was never fully tested.

A solution could be to make the bleeds unlimited stacks or each player gets their own bleed limit or something similar…

This is for PVE not PVP

yep, a per player bleed stack limit would solve this issue alright.

I never liked that everyone’s conditions stack on each other. I’ve got a ton of condition damage, what if another guy doesn’t? Shouldn’t my bleeds be doing more damage then their bleeds? If so, aren’t their stacks replacing mine at some points and lowering damage? The whole system seems negative and confusing.

I agree with this.

Each player should get their own condition stack for the enemy.

As a condition warrior myself, I agree with a per-player bleed stack. I wonder how it would look on the UI though..

I actually dropped my condition build because of how conditions stack. It’s GREAT solo but when you get into a group it really messes you up. If they ever change the condition mechanic within groups I’ll return to my condition build, but until then power works for me.

I think this is more of a IT structure thing then anything else. I know alot of MMOs tend to have this. I think keeping track of hundreds of players stacks of buffs drains the system

An alternative is that there should be a secondary effect or condition that occurs when you reach/sustain the cap on a target. For example if you apply a stack of bleeding and the target already has 25 stacks, the stack is removed, and the target is dealt a flat % health damage.

Perhaps they make an upgrade DOT called hemorrage that is a much larger scale that gains stacks of duration as 25 stacks of bleed are reached.

Why not just change conditions? I mean, if a Thief notices a warrior is easily maintaining 25 stacks of bleeds on a mob, they why doesn’t the Thief adjust to trying to maintain blind? Why doesn’t the Mesmer focusing on a variety of conditions to maximize the dmg potential of herself and the necro?

Play as a group maybe instead of five individuals that want a system changed so they can do the same thing?

Just doesn’t seem very efficient to me, given all of the options available, to sit there and do nothing because someone else is handling one specific condition.

Sorry for double post, edit button was gone. It’s worth adding that you can easily change major trait perks and utility skills in a dungeon. So if you find your role is being filled by someone else that might be more effective, its simple to make adjustments to better accommodate the party.

Its pretty common for a group with two thieves or two guardians to change up a little bit on the fly to work better together rather than nullify one another.

Yes, they can adjust for the other 4 people in the group, but what about the next group a couple hours later, and the one after that? I just don’t like the idea of respecing my build for every group I get into, or carrying several sets of gear.

Well Scribe, welcome to Guild Wars. Changing traits, skills, and having a few extra pieces of gear on the side for certain occasions is part of the game (we have special “gear” bags specifically for this). It’s always been part of the game. In the original it was such a prevalent part of the game that you had four pre-sets for weapons and a template system to save specific builds and swap them on the fly.

GW2 doesn’t need something that complicated since you only change major trait perks and there are only 20-30 skills to worry about instead of over a hundred per profession with two professions per character.

If you want to be a specialist character, that is your prerogative. But the side-effect of that is getting fewer groups because you aren’t able and willing to quickly adapt, and even fewer again after the people that do take you see that cant adjust to the party.

I personally cant see why anyone would want to play that way. Three minutes of communication and a few mouse clicks meaning a dungeon runs smoother and faster?

Seems like another case of players accustomed to a system where the game pigeon holes you in to a certain role based on a skill tree you are specced into and gear you grinded weeks to get. That’s not how this game is designed from the ground up. You are expected to change on the fly based on group needs.

AcidicVision.5498:

Well Scribe, welcome to Guild Wars. Changing traits, skills, and having a few extra pieces of gear on the side for certain occasions is part of the game (we have special “gear” bags specifically for this). It’s always been part of the game. In the original it was such a prevalent part of the game that you had four pre-sets for weapons and a template system to save specific builds and swap them on the fly.

This was something I always enjoyed in GW—the extreme versatility of skills and builds (metagame notwithstanding). Having loadable/swappable templates in GW2 is definitely a top 5 want list item for me.

Kain Francois.4328:

As a condition warrior myself, I agree with a per-player bleed stack. I wonder how it would look on the UI though..

It could be as simple as another “condition” row for your conds only below the current one.

While I’m not particularly a fan of the mechanic I can understand why it’s there. Basically, if it were unlimited then everyone would be running condition tanky builds and infinitely kite in dungeons. Tanky condition builds are still viable, but due to the limit just aren’t optimal to have more than one. Dungeons should basically have four kinds of players: Tanky sustained damage, tanky condition, tanky support, and good sustained damage with some survivability. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find good gear with power/toughness/vitality on it apart from legendaries, and while precision is great should be the first stat in line to be sacrificed for dungeon viability due to high mob health and damage. Some precision is still good if you’re in the good sustained damage with some survivability category though as long as you have enough vitality and toughness to get through.

annoying, but necessary.

at least you (like me) are a condition thief, you can change to burst if you need to without respeccing. sure, it won’t be as good as your condition damage, but you’ll be letting other players fully utilize their characters while you’re still being useful, rather than capping each other out.

I think they should make bleed more like Dark souls 2 where you have a build up effect but once it hits a cap there is a bleed out dmg. Have it a set DoT effect when you tag a mob with it then you get buffs on your self once you hit a set number the debuff on the mob is removed and it take a set dmg off of condition dmg. This will give condition dmg a burst like effect with out losing its DoT ability. You will also have to think about should i just spam bleeds to no end to get the burst dmg or should i let the DoT stay up.
That or they just can have mobs removed bleed effects on them faster making it imposable to get to the cap.

Jski.6180:

I think they should make bleed more like Dark souls 2 where you have a build up effect but once it hits a cap there is a bleed out dmg. Have it a set DoT effect when you tag a mob with it then you get buffs on your self once you hit a set number the debuff on the mob is removed and it take a set dmg off of condition dmg. This will give condition dmg a burst like effect with out losing its DoT ability. You will also have to think about should i just spam bleeds to no end to get the burst dmg or should i let the DoT stay up.
That or they just can have mobs removed bleed effects on them faster making it imposable to get to the cap.

first, there is no dark souls 2. there’s demon’s souls, and dark souls :P

second, there are already plenty of conditions that stack with time, rather than ticks. burning, poison, cripple, chill, etc all stack in duration, whereas bleed and confusion stack in damage.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Jski.6180:

I think they should make bleed more like Dark souls 2 where you have a build up effect but once it hits a cap there is a bleed out dmg. Have it a set DoT effect when you tag a mob with it then you get buffs on your self once you hit a set number the debuff on the mob is removed and it take a set dmg off of condition dmg. This will give condition dmg a burst like effect with out losing its DoT ability. You will also have to think about should i just spam bleeds to no end to get the burst dmg or should i let the DoT stay up.
That or they just can have mobs removed bleed effects on them faster making it imposable to get to the cap.

first, there is no dark souls 2. there’s demon’s souls, and dark souls :P

second, there are already plenty of conditions that stack with time, rather than ticks. burning, poison, cripple, chill, etc all stack in duration, whereas bleed and confusion stack in damage.

Your right about dark souls no idea what i was thinking on that point its just hitting max stacks on world mobs its the main problem not dungeon, wvw, and spvp. You run into ppl not getting high enofe dmg on these world bosses to get gold even if they where there all fight and doing something to help.
See with my idea its a type of crit that you control when it happens but you cant do it back to back.

i have to admit, it does get a bit confusing
for instance, if a Guardian uses Virtue of Justice, how is the burning calculated? is it based off the Guardian’s stats? the effected player’s stats? if its the other player’s, then what happens if the Guardian has better Condition Dmg, since burning only stacks duration, additional stacks wont matter, and would be less useful if a low burning dmging player applies the first stack

i dont know what to do about Burning, but as far a Bleeding goes, i like the Burst dmg idea at the stack cap, but maybe raise the cap so just constantly stacking bleed isnt the main goal. i say have the effected mob hemorrhage dealing a fair amount and reset the counter, perhaps retain Bleed’s inability to crit

It would really imbalance bleeds versus burn and poison if there were unlimited stacks of bleed. It’s already very easy to load up a lot of bleeds. You can only have one burn. The consolation is 1 burn does a lot more than 1 bleed, and bleeds are capped at 25.

To change it would require going back to balance everything all over again.

Even if it were possible and ANet was willing to do the work with due diligence, I don’t think it would make for a better game. As it is now, if you’re a group player, plan accordingly.

mulch.2586:

It would really imbalance bleeds versus burn and poison if there were unlimited stacks of bleed. It’s already very easy to load up a lot of bleeds. You can only have one burn. The consolation is 1 burn does a lot more than 1 bleed, and bleeds are capped at 25.

To change it would require going back to balance everything all over again.

Even if it were possible and ANet was willing to do the work with due diligence, I don’t think it would make for a better game. As it is now, if you’re a group player, plan accordingly.

well burn is supposed to be a fast, high damage condition, whereas bleed is supposed to stay there for a bit longer and linger the player over time (which means bleeds are more likely to be cleansed than burns).

poison is rarely used for damage. the cool thing about poison is that it nerfs the healing by 33%.