Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been reading various profession forums, and it seems that the main reason that DD builds are preferred over Condi builds boils down to it being way too easy to dump conditions once they are on you, primarily in group situations (PvP, WvW) which, let’s be honest, seems to inform all of the balancing decisions for the professions over PvE.

So if this is a known issue, why hasn’t this been scaled back enough to make condi builds equally viable?

Don’t blow all your cooldowns at once?

For really condi-heavy builds, there’s no getting away from them, eventually. In the very least, you’ll be limping around with bleed/poison for most of the fight. Cleanses have reasonably varied cooldown times, but there are large gaps in between, unless you really, really spec for it.

That’s counter-play, at that point, since you’re sacrificing control, damage, and in some cases, support, so you personally can stay upright.

And if the group has a lot of condi cleanse, a group of similar size might very well have tons of conditions to spread around.

Condi cleanse itself isn’t the problem….. its the nature of condition damage, how its applied, the rate its applied at, and how the cooldowns stagger its application.

In DD balance, you have several active defenses that can be used to avoid or heavily mitigate that damage, which properly scales with the number of ways that damage can be boosted. Dodge, Aegis, protection, and Armor vs Rapid attacks, crits and % bonuses. But what makes the play/counter play work is the ability to time burst attacks, as well as executing active defenses to deal with it…. the rest of the time can be spent maneuvering in a defense stance, allowing you to quickly respond to incoming attacks.

Condi damage works in the opposite direction. Its damage has a ramp up time, and designed entirely around sustain and upkeep. But defensively, you only have the option to purge, or not purge- and in the case of Resilience, to negate effects or not negate. There is no mitigating option. And since conditions utilize DD methodology as their delivery mechanism, active defenses are capable of preventing them from applying in the first place. If left unchallenged, condi builds can generate respectable damage….. but its sustain nature doesn’t mesh correctly with active combat style, as all characters spend around half their time or more dodging and repositioning, while waiting for an opening in the enemies defenses to attack.

All that considered, on top of Direct damage’s scaling potential, its ability to heavily capitalize on the momentary weaknesses of enemy defenses is the main reason its so popular. Condi tend to fair far better when the delivery mechanism is unavoidable…. which for this game is AOE and explosive style attacks.

I think the problem is
1) Except for a few insane burning, most condi skills deal less damage than a direct damage skill. But you have more ways to remove them (cleanse + healing instead of just healing) so direct damage > condi damage
2) you can have full condi damage with only 1 stat instead of 3 for direct damage. So you can be more defensive while dealing only slightly less damage than a zerker.

1 (cleanse) and 2 (condi=defensive) balance each other somewhat for 1 vs 1. On the other hand:

3) AOE cleanse, so 1 vs 1 is balanced, 5 vs 5 is not because 5 people can have almost full cleanse up-time.

you have to look at the whole picture and not just condi’s vs groups.

in 1v1, condi’s are and always have been mostly superior to power, for two reasons. 1) you can gear more defensively. Because you don’t need ferocity and minimal amounts of crit are optional, there is a lot more stat room for healing, toughness, vit. 2) there is not enough personal condi cleanse, and there hasn’t been since torment and perplexity runes (and torment sigils) were added giving extra conditions to classes that never used to have them. passive condi cleanse (remove every 10sec, etc) is weaker now than ever because of poison / burning intensity stacking rather than duration stacking. You aren’t going to cut the 20sec guardian burn into at least half by relying on the old passive removals, instead, it’s going to last 5 seconds and do all of its damage in a much shorter time. its insanely bad design.

group condi cleanse is a separate topic and is mostly a combination of trooper runes and the Guardian trait “purity of voice” and Elementalist pulsing cleaning fields like Healing rain combined with cleansing water. That isn’t too bad on its own, but the zerg meta is GWEN. The roll of the gaurdian is to shout clean people (i’m less critical on the ele here because cleansing water is not nearly as popular as it used to be). As long as people intentionally stack specific classes heavily for condi cleanse, condi’s are going to be less useful in zergs.

does condi removal in zergs need to be toned down? maybe. but maybe condi’s shouldn’t be the best answer for both 1v1 and group fights, so maybe condi cleansing in groups helps keep power relevant.

Thank you all for your input. To be clear, I’m not seeking for condi to be superior to power. It just seems universal that DD is preferred or meta. As idealistic as it may seem, it would be nice if there wasn’t a meta as far as DD vs condi is concerned.

Do most of the AoE cleanses clear all conditions, or only 1 or 2? AoE cleanse is a little OP if it cleanses all conditions imo.

AoE boon and cleansing are on a rampage compared to AoE condition and boon hate so obviously conditions are subpar in team fights.

If anything, we need A LOT more cleanses, not less. You have to nuts to want less in this meta.

DeWolfe.2174:

If anything, we need A LOT more cleanses, not less. You have to nuts to want less in this meta.

What class are you playing?

I main a mesmer, and excluding bonuses from traits, I have access to four different cleansing skills. I have more cleanses than I have utility slots to fit them in. I’d say there’s plenty available to choose from.
If condi damage bothers you so much then try playing a class with more ability to counter it. We really don’t need any more cleansing; condi builds are already harder to pull off than meta builds (hence why they aren’t the meta ones) without making every class as un-conditionable as mesmers.

More like not enough cleansing, depending on your profession.

From my sPVP experience as necro i say condition removal isnt a big issue in my games. I regularly see my target running a dozen of bleeds and vulns and some chill and poison at the same time. To combat condi cleansing going for maxed condi damage is counterproductive; instead you need a balance of tanky stats (to apply condis you gotta stay alive) and a precision with stuff that applies condies on crits. You also need a sizeable power to swap to a melee weapon and do some spanking when situation arises.
As everywhere, a build with oversized something in detriment of others is not going to be viable.

@ OP
The reason it hasn’t been scaled back is because of all the people in posts like these saying we need more condi clear in the game. Some classes could use more condi clear options, but individual builds don’t need more condi clear. Conditions don’t really deal more damage than power builds in any situation either. Someone in dire and someone in soldiers do very very similar damage (on occasion burning will be better dps, but no the other condis), the difference is that with direct damage you can spec for two other armor stats to do even more damage, while only having 1 more for condition damage.

The reason no one runs condis on pvp teams is because of aoe condi clear (near useless in teamfights), the reason no one runs condis in wvw zergs is because of aoe condi clear (almost totally useless). There are good 1vs1 condi builds, but once you get 2 classes with aoe cleansing pure condi builds become near useless (which is why you see cele in pvp). Now, in a regular pvp game where teams aren’t premade this isn’t an issue, but against good team comps condis become less powerful.

Rauderi.8706:

For really condi-heavy builds, there’s no getting away from them, eventually. In the very least, you’ll be limping around with bleed/poison for most of the fight. Cleanses have reasonably varied cooldown times, but there are large gaps in between, unless you really, really spec for it.

That’s counter-play, at that point, since you’re sacrificing control, damage, and in some cases, support, so you personally can stay upright.

And if the group has a lot of condi cleanse, a group of similar size might very well have tons of conditions to spread around.

The problem is that you are not sacrificing support, cc, etc as you claim. For example I have been playing guard and war among my toons pretty much since game launched. I can put together teams that are entirely and outright immune to the CC condis and have so much other condi cleanse while being tanky, while being supportive etc. that it’d be a miracle if a condi deeps does more then 10% – 20% of its potential damage. This is from personal 1st hand experience, I have in fact put together teams like this numerous times. Basically sit there and LOL at anything condi, dont even need to dodge or anything.

Add to that lag and skill delay with the uber lame A-Nets attempt at ti-di mechanics, and again, you cant even apply condis, but can apply direct damage. This is true throughout the entire game but best seen in WvW massive battles.

I would seriosuly like to see team condi cleanses nerfed, a lot, (and this coming from a team condi cleansing guardian) and in place of it add some extra individual cleanse abilities. this way more players are responsible for their individual choices, as well as guards / warriors have more room to deviate from the meta since the team will not need them to run certain builds anymore. Its a win / win situation all around.

Last but not least, focus DPS on a pvp target via condi is almost ineffective if the targets team mate cleanses it at the current rate, whereas focus DPS via direct damage is still very effective. This is another problem.

Silverkey.2078:

2) you can have full condi damage with only 1 stat instead of 3 for direct damage. So you can be more defensive while dealing only slightly less damage than a zerker.

This is just flat out wrong. Condition Damage is analogous to Power. That direct damage has the OPTION to massively multiply it’s offensive effectiveness by pouring points into two more stats doesn’t make condition damage better. its one of the principle reasons condition damage can never catch up to what direct damage builds are dishing out.

If you stack power and use your other points for survivability the way condition damage builds are FORCED TO, you’d see similar results: much lower damage output and higher survivability.

Where cleansing is concerned I think the main problem is one of 2 things
1: Either the class relies far to heavily on a very few conditions (sometimes even a single one in the case of guardians)
or
2: They have access to a variety of conditions but cannot stack conditions fast enough to output the kind of pressure needed to be competitive.

In the case of number 1 they could widen the amount of conditions the condi linefor the spec has access to via traits.

In the case of 2 they simply tack on some extra condition application.

Another thing they could do is look at allowing some (or all) conditions to critically hit & allow them to benefit from ferocity.

After that its all a numbers balance issue.

@Nike
I disagree, on most classes, a Soldier build gives less damage than a Dire build. If it was not for that, conditions builds would not exist or be as successful in roaming for example. Sure, a berserker gives more damage than a Dire, and actually, usually a bit more than a sinister or rampager because of the damage multipliers you can pull in PvE. The key is that a Dire is not dishing that much less than a Sinister!

I think this could be better stated that most classes have too few means of condition application.

some few classes (you know who you are) have continual, consistent condition application, while others (my poor poor necro…) have long cooldown, short burst condition application. Which can then be cleansed in a single cast.

zapv.8051:

Someone in dire and someone in soldiers do very very similar damage.

LOL… not even remotely the same. Completely depends on the professions access to condi’s.