Guild Wars 2

Something strikes me about the buff of weakness in PvE: it’s a nerf!
Before: 50% of non-crit attacks are glancing blows (50% damage) = 25% damage reduction if target had no crit chance (= 5% damage reduction if target had 50% crit chance and 50% crit damage bonus)
Now: 25% of all attacks are glancing blows = 12.5% damage reduction

Except:
-Stacking of weakness is now limited (I don’t get it though)
-PvE mobs/bosses have very low (if any) crit chances!
-Duration of weakness has been reduced by half!

It’s a trap !

They are balancing it for esports. Pve takes a backseat.

Assuming the notes are real, saying it now only stacks 5 times doesn’t really make sense. Currently, weakness stacks like burning, where it infinitely stacks in duration. Just saying it only stacks 5 times would mean it would only stack in duration 5 times, limiting its maximum possible duration. Since new applications overwrite however, you could keep weakness alive by refreshing it. If a zerg inflicted weakness all at once however, it would be capped at 5*<longest individual durations> seconds, instead of lasting a few minutes like it would now.

Assuming it’s not just a zerg prevention, it would make more sense if they meant it now stacks intensity and now only stacks up to 5 times. This would mean weakness would be like bleeding, where 5 stacks would mean a 125% chance to fumble. But then why 125%? Did they mean 20% chance at 5 stacks or 25% chance at 4 stacks, or is there just an extra 25%?

Unshakable currently reduces weakness duration by 50%. In this case, the new weakness would be pretty short, since it would only last 1 second if the average weakness lasts 2-3 seconds. If this is also changed, to something like reduces fumble chance by 50%, then weakness stacking in intensity up to 125% makes more sense, though depending on how that’s calculating, using weakness alone against this would be useless.

In a PvP scenario, the difference between 4 stacks of weakness and 5 would be the difference of a coordinated team, since the extra 25% would be useless.

… or the notes could just be fake.

I was also commenting the same in these forums + last night guild TeamSpeak. Weakness is going to be significantly worse for WvWvW and pve.

Strangely this game continues to be “balanced” based on the most unpopular game mode: tpvp. Weakness definitely doesn’t need a nerf for pve nor WvWvW.

Razeor.6271:

They are balancing it for esports. Pve takes a backseat.

Yep it’s why the condition builds are still weaksauce to this day compared to zerker and why we’re seeing all zerker builds in dungeons. Until they actually buff condition builds we’re going to see more of this honestly.

did weakness ever even work on ALL boss abilities? This obviously wont effect people getting stomped in fractals (Agony) or on the very few non fractal bosses (lupi) that are hard. The only thing I can think of is major trash pulls like in dredge or CoE.

I mean alot of condtions like blind/stun etc dont work on them.

tigirius.9014:

Razeor.6271:

They are balancing it for esports. Pve takes a backseat.

Yep it’s why the condition builds are still weaksauce to this day compared to zerker and why we’re seeing all zerker builds in dungeons. Until they actually buff condition builds we’re going to see more of this honestly.

Condition builds would be fine if they removed the 25 bleed cap, literally that’s all they would have to do.

Zepidel.5349:

tigirius.9014:

Razeor.6271:

They are balancing it for esports. Pve takes a backseat.

Yep it’s why the condition builds are still weaksauce to this day compared to zerker and why we’re seeing all zerker builds in dungeons. Until they actually buff condition builds we’re going to see more of this honestly.

Condition builds would be fine if they removed the 25 bleed cap, literally that’s all they would have to do.

It would be nice if burning and poison stacked too instead of resetting the timers

It would be nice if they just made the existing system apply to critical hits or…

50% of normal hits become glancing blows
50% of critical hits become normal hits.