Guild Wars 2

I don’t see a reason why condition damage isn’t under the same influence of precision and critical damage as raw power damage.

Are there technical / programming issues or is just Anet philosophy that condition should not crit?

Let’s say you have 25% critical chance and 20% critical damage. Why can’t the bleed (or any other condition) damage tick be increased by 20% for every 4th tick?

Or maybe for every 4th applied condition tick your malice was 20% stronger? Or 20 % longer duration?

I don’t know the final solution, but something needs to be done about condition damage. It is not as strong as raw power dmage and doesn’t benefit at all from neither precision nor critical damage.

I think most are concerned with why condition damage cant have multiple versions of it. preventing multiple condition damage builds being less effective.

Probably because of the ‘On-Crit’ effects that are present in the game. If condition damage could crit, it would trigger the on-crit effects alot, which would be unfair to classes who don’t have much access to conditions. Besides, I would be able to keep up (for example) 25 stacks of Might with just a couple of stacks of bleeding.

Sito.6352:

Probably because of the ‘On-Crit’ effects that are present in the game. If condition damage could crit, it would trigger the on-crit effects alot, which would be unfair to classes who don’t have much access to conditions. Besides, I would be able to keep up (for example) 25 stacks of Might with just a couple of stacks of bleeding.

Most on-crit effects have internal cooldowns for this reason, players can already stack a lot of crits all at once. I doubt this has much to do with it.

It’s probably more just the way condition damage is meant to be unique from direct damage. It can’t crit, but in return it ignores armor. A whole stack of bleeds can be removed instantly with a cure, but in return a player can be tagged with a condition and still take damage even if they leave LoS or get out of range of the attacking player.

As far as pure damage output, good condition builds are probably on par with direct damage builds. The problem with condition builds is likely more due to stacking reasons than condition damage itself being underpowered.

Because crit and condition builds are seperate by trait, if condition’s could crit then people who make condition builds would be forced to also go into crit stats and traits which would kill the point of builds being unique. Crit would be essential to condition builds if conditions critted.

Bleed and especially Confusion would be OP if they could crit.

Especially confusion.

25 stacks of bleed = 25 chances to crit every second. That’s nuts.

And a confusion crit would nearly one-shot some classes depending on how many stacks of confusion are on you.

DancinPuppeh.8421:

Because crit and condition builds are seperate by trait, if condition’s could crit then people who make condition builds would be forced to also go into crit stats and traits which would kill the point of builds being unique. Crit would be essential to condition builds if conditions critted.

What are u talking about? That is already the case.

In most skill traits trees, condition or condition duration is in the Preision tree (crit) and gives Crit damage.

DancinPuppeh.8421:

Because crit and condition builds are seperate by trait, if condition’s could crit then people who make condition builds would be forced to also go into crit stats and traits which would kill the point of builds being unique. Crit would be essential to condition builds if conditions critted.

Guardian: Radiance (Precision/Condition Damage)
Warrior: Arms (Precision/Condition Damage)
Engineer: Firearms (Precision/Condition Damage)
Necromancer: Curses (Precision/Condition Damage)

Other 4 are Precision/Critical Damage

Seems like an even 50/50 split to me.

Kakeru.2873:

DancinPuppeh.8421:

Because crit and condition builds are seperate by trait, if condition’s could crit then people who make condition builds would be forced to also go into crit stats and traits which would kill the point of builds being unique. Crit would be essential to condition builds if conditions critted.

What are u talking about? That is already the case.

In most skill traits trees, condition or condition duration is in the Preision tree (crit) and gives Crit damage.

Correction: condition damage is in half the precision trees, and duration is ALWAYS on the power tree.

Conditions always deal the damage they are supposed to deal, unless their duration is reduced or they are removed. This is a design choice, and is why they don’t crit.

It is not as strong as raw power dmage and doesn’t benefit at all from neither precision nor critical damage.

Against high armor targets & protection boons, conditions are stronger. And for a lot of condition specs, they benefit from precision due to condition procs.

Condition damage benefits from condition duration as a secondary scaling stat.

Many condition-heavy builds feature precision for additional condition procs as a tertiary condition stat.

In addition, combo field abuse tends to favor conditions in general.

Conditions ignore armor, protection, and even pure invulnerability. Having 50%+ crit with conditions critting once every two ticks would be outrageously overpowered.

Sito.6352:

Probably because of the ‘On-Crit’ effects that are present in the game. If condition damage could crit, it would trigger the on-crit effects alot, which would be unfair to classes who don’t have much access to conditions. Besides, I would be able to keep up (for example) 25 stacks of Might with just a couple of stacks of bleeding.

That doesn’t make sense. They could easily make condition damag crit, but not make it trigger on-crit effects, if that was their concern.

Hawkian.6580:

Conditions ignore armor, protection, and even pure invulnerability. Having 50%+ crit with conditions critting once every two ticks would be outrageously overpowered.

This might be the reason. I dislike the condition cap, however.

Hawkian.6580:

Conditions ignore armor, protection, and even pure invulnerability. Having 50%+ crit with conditions critting once every two ticks would be outrageously overpowered.

Not really for most conditions. Just to give an example here. On my thief I can crit a heartseeker(full health) for 4k easily. That’s 50% crit and 90%+ crit damage. Now if I had 50% crit and tons of condition damage my DB 3 stack bleed would do ~3k damage before crit and 4.5k after.

Considering that it will take 10s for 4.5k damage vs 4k instantly(4s), I think that’s more than a fair match-up. Now consider that in that 10s that damage can be COMPLETELY mitigated. That 4k instant damage is looking better and better! Then we have heals, which since dots take time to work also gives regen a chance to work and the player a chance to use their heal or wait for it to come off cooldown. Finally, we have stack/duration caps. While in PvP they aren’t as big of an issue, they still drastically limit condition damage.

The problem here is that the “tradeoffs” condition damage has doesn’t make up for it’s giant weakness. Going through armor and working out of LOS is nice…but the fact that it cannot crit means it doesn’t scale well(since duration is only available via traits, runes, and food). The fact that most of the damage can be completely mitigated also means it falls behind direct damage further. What makes it worse is that increasing it’s duration also makes it far more likely to be mitigated.

Condition damage just does not scale well compared to direct damage when you take in all the factors. If ArenaNet didn’t add so much condition removal, added condition duration(in place of precision) on armor and removed condition caps; it would be different. But until then condition damage will be behind direct damage on all but the highest armor targets that don’t have condition removal.

Condition cap needs to go away – give npcs more condition removals (that you can interupt if you time it well, like ether renewal on ele.)

It’s not mitigated by toughness. So no crits but no passive mitigation either.

emikochan.8504:

Condition cap needs to go away – give npcs more condition removals (that you can interupt if you time it well, like ether renewal on ele.)

At this point, I kind of doubt that the condition cap is an intentional design/balance decision…. its current implementation pretty clearly results in condition application actively reducing the damage of other players who rely on conditions for their damage. Players who heavily use condition damage are actively hurt/hindered by other condition damage users attacking the same mob as them, which seems to go against one of the core design philosophies of the game (always being happy to see other players, rather than having to compete with them). The only reason I can think of that the cap still exists is if there’s some kind of technical or server stability reason for it. I really doubt that Anet is happy with how conditions currently work (or at least I hope not).

Anyway, I think it’ll be more likely that we’ll see some other kind of solution rather than a removal of caps. Something like bleeds instantly dealing a portion of their overall damage if the target is already at the bleeding cap. Not sure what could be done for burning/poison.

emikochan.8504:

Condition cap needs to go away – give npcs more condition removals (that you can interupt if you time it well, like ether renewal on ele.)

And similarly give them healing abilities rather than larger health pools.

Not that it will matter much in zerg situations as interrupts often happen as side effects of the dps rotations.

Hawkian.6580:

Conditions ignore armor, protection, and even pure invulnerability. Having 50%+ crit with conditions critting once every two ticks would be outrageously overpowered.

Armor, sure. But protection? Unless i am missing something, protection flat out reduce damage. It is not a armor boost or similar.

digiowl.9620:

Hawkian.6580:

Conditions ignore armor, protection, and even pure invulnerability. Having 50%+ crit with conditions critting once every two ticks would be outrageously overpowered.

Armor, sure. But protection? Unless i am missing something, protection flat out reduce damage. It is not a armor boost or similar.

I’m pretty sure that protection won’t reduce the damage of conditions already on you. Not sure about any conditions applied while protection is up. Since, as far as I’m aware, Vulnerability does not improve condition damage, I’m tempted to say that Protection does not either.

It would make my necromancer the most powerful thing in the entire game.

Distaste.4801:

Condition damage just does not scale well compared to direct damage when you take in all the factors.

This is also my conclusion after trying alot of different builds. Condition damage needs a lot more time to deal the same amount of damage compared to perhaps one single hit / crit hit.

If you consider a raw power/prec/crit and a condition/duration build within the same profession, I’m pretty sure the raw power build will deal the most damage.

Maybe the condition damage is just there to “spice” things up? And not a real threat?

This has been an issue in every game that insists to create classes around condition/dots. The last thing people want with these attacks is to have a longer duration. We want the same amount of damage in a shorter amount of time.

Now that said, are we sure condition and power damage are worth the same number of points? If power is your primary stat and you get +100, how much +condition damage do you get if it’s the primary stat?

Depends, as each condition have a different 0.x multiplier (coefficient?) attached to them. For instance, you need 8-10 stacks of bleed to reach the DPS of burn for the same about of condition damage points.

Never mind that a similar formula is behind each direct damage skill. But there the multiplier have to be teased out of the formula, further complicated by the inclusion of armor. Power and armor basically balance out with one increasing and the other decreasing the damage, with the critical hit percentage increase being applied afterwards.

Well look at it this way how would condition dmg crit and how would having higher crit chase on your hero make condition dmg crit more?

The multiplier for dots is based on one stack of bleed damage. They each have a separate formula, but if you do the calculations it ends up like this: Poison is 2x bleed and Burn is 6xbleed.

I agree that there is no reason for the existence of condition cap.

There are many “on crit” conditions that fire off crits, thats where the crit percentage helps conditions. In fact its essential to a lot of condition builds to have good crit chance.

Its already beneficial enough, why build in more? They balanced around there being no crits on dots, and thats how it is. If they had crit dots they would just lower the normal dot damage to compensate, do you want that?

forget conditions critting….

why cant conditions do full damage to yellow named objects?

do you realize how frustrating / embarrassing it is to not be able to take out a gargoyle head or a mound in ascalon catacombs because you do condition damage?

Guild wars 2 condition system is a flat-out embarrassment.

Malvagite.3254:

forget conditions critting….

why cant conditions do full damage to yellow named objects?

do you realize how frustrating / embarrassing it is to not be able to take out a gargoyle head or a mound in ascalon catacombs because you do condition damage?

Guild wars 2 condition system is a flat-out embarrassment.

Couldn’t agree more!

I can’t figure out why there is such a disconnect with how power based and condition based skills work in many aspects of the game. You can’t hit objects, you’re subject to stack limits, etc. It smacks of being a bandaid fix to some deeper design problems.

A nice thing would be add remove conditions you put on some one for a burst dmg well for bleed and fire only. The other 2 conditions dmg are more then just dmg i would also love to see confusion moved to bashing weapons so we can see a good counter to fast attkers when your a slow attker hammer shields maces.

Conditions can’t crit because Anet is, for some reason, deathly afraid of making DoTs overpowered…

In a game where power builds can destroy people before a DoT would even have time to tick twice.

As a warrior with dual swords and a long bow with frenzie, I’m sure I could put 25 stacks of bleed on-top of a burning condition. Let’s say My bleeds do about 100dmg a sec and fire does more than 500, that’s more than 3000 dmg per second on-top of any phisical damage I might do. If they increased the count of bleeds they would have to diminish thier power, making condition builds even less desirable on an individual level than they already are. On a boss in a dungeon I can see less reason for it to be a problem, but on anything less than a champ, it might get really dead really quick…

I’m also fine with conditions not crit’ing. It makes an odd kind of sense to me.

Rather than a chance to crit on each tick, there should be a crit system for conditions that is checked for when the skill first hits. On a crit, the crit damage percentage would be applied to the duration of any stacks applied on that attack. i.e. on crit, with a 100% crit damage bonus, (the cap), a skill that applies 3 5-second bleeds would instead apply 3 10 second bleeds, or, Poison (7 seconds) would apply Poison (14 Seconds).

As to the problem of stacks hitting the 25 stack cap and diminishing returns there after, one solution would be to add new “mega-conditions” that wipe out and replace a 25 stack. Let’s say that at 25 stacks of bleed, the next bleed stack wipes out the 25 stack of bleeds, but adds a stack of “Hemorrhage” which approximates the DoT of the stacks of bleeds it replaces, with one additional bonus effect. (Cripple, Confusion, or what ever seems appropriate).

I’d be overjoyed if conditions worked toward static objects in some way.

As for the “mega-conditions”, how would that even work. If you have 6 people stacking bleed, how would the damage from each person be counted? Would it be a set % for each person, or based on how much the previous bleeds would do?

There are indeed several problems with the basic mechanics of conditions in this game. From the top of my head, I’d list them as

1. Bleed cap has to go. You need high stacks to even come close to direct damage builds, and even if you run a condition build, hoping you won’t run into another one, you won’t get your full damage potential in groups because many classes will stack bleeds themselves as a side effect of what they do, cutting into your damage. (warriors have it as a mandatory trait in melee and by default on their ranged, thieves will want to use caltrops even in power builds, rangers always have bleed skills on their pets, engies on rifle and grenade specs and so on…)

2. There is little synergy for condition builds from traits, and all those mandatory traits that say +10% damage just don’t do anything for condition builds.

3. Itemization doesn’t work that well. For Power builds we have power, precision and crit on every piece of equipment, which work together. On condition builds, there is just raw condition damage on every piece and that’s it. Runes have bleed duration but for every other piece, I just care for the cond damage and would often actually prefer cond/vit/toughness if it were available, because nothing else really does much for me. I’m also excited to see how they go forward with ascended items, because if they don’t adjust their parameters, direct damage will definitely pull ahead even more, by a huge margin once ascended sets are completed.

Conditions have 100% armor penetration.

Who needs crits?

Jski.6180:

A nice thing would be add remove conditions you put on some one for a burst dmg well for bleed and fire only.

Something like Necromancer scepter #2, but that would convert his previously applied conditions into damage on the spot?

I guess the condition equivalent of a fumble would be stabbing yourself/setting yourself on fire?

I can imagine an Ele with Meteor Shower or Glyph of Storms if that were true.

Khisanth.2948:

I guess the condition equivalent of a fumble would be stabbing yourself/setting yourself on fire?

Guardians already do the latter…

Conditions critting isn’t really the issue. It’s the stack limit (and duration to a point) that’s hurting Condi classes more than anything else. If you’re the only Condi class, you’ll be fine. 2, well, maybe you won’t hurt each other with the stack cap. Any more than 2, well….you’re screwed.

I agree about how the cap has to go.

I have a pure CD necro build. Full set of Carrion..of the Necromaner armor. Full set of Carrion…of Corruption weapons, trinkets and traits selected to maximize this. At a full 25 stacks of corruption, my condition damage is at just under 1500 and power at just under 2000. It’s a great build, for veterans and stronger enemies, since over time I can cause enormous damage. It’s awful for low vit enemies if you’re in a group or at an event. By the time you get things cast, mobs are usually already dead. I’ll often try casting fear just to make mobs run away from other players to give myself time to actually do some damage. More recently I’ve switched to daggers to try to get more damage in, but I have to be so close and still can’t compete with the sheer burst damage of warriors.

It’s plain and simple, the game is not friendly to caster/support builds. A majority of players I see are warriors, so they will cater to that demographic. If players, again mostly melee users, say AOE is too strong they will nerf it and limit it’s effect to appease the masses. In reality, if you’re standing in a red ring and not trying to dodge, as I see so many warriors doing in WvW, or if you run through a necro mark without bothering to go around, you deserve to die. My necro will take down a warrior every time if they approach me with that muscle-headed berserker mentality. If they play smart and actually dodge, try to avoid my attacks, and actually know how to remove conditions, I’m screwed.

I love my necro and enjoy playing it, but I do regret my choice since the game is so heavily weighted to melee classes. Everything from damage to better chance for better loot is skewed toward melee classes. The professions need to be reanalyzed by someone who is objective and rebalanced properly. ALL builds, support builds are an integral part of group play, who contributed equally should have an equal chance to get good loot, not just those with high burst damage and high DPS. There is much more to fight than just causing damage. A lot of content cannot be done or becomes much more difficult without some sort of group support and that should be rewarded equally. Currently, it is not.

digiowl.9620:

Khisanth.2948:

I guess the condition equivalent of a fumble would be stabbing yourself/setting yourself on fire?

Guardians already do the latter…

If only that was true. It would make it easier to use Inner Fire.

Ehra.5240:

It’s probably more just the way condition damage is meant to be unique from direct damage. It can’t crit, but in return it ignores armor. A whole stack of bleeds can be removed instantly with a cure, but in return a player can be tagged with a condition and still take damage even if they leave LoS or get out of range of the attacking player.

I’d have to say this. Condition damage is different from direct damage in many ways (both good & bad) for a reason. Can’t crit, but ignores armor. Easy to remove (if you brough the right skills) but persists beyond LoS & through invulnerability. If you could stack crit & condition, nobody would every play power builds. It’d just be too OP. Plus, ‘on crit’ effects would need to be reworked because they’d in essence just be ‘happens all the time on internal CD.’

Leamas.5803:

ALL builds, support builds are an integral part of group play, who contributed equally should have an equal chance to get good loot, not just those with high burst damage and high DPS. There is much more to fight than just causing damage. A lot of content cannot be done or becomes much more difficult without some sort of group support and that should be rewarded equally. Currently, it is not.

It’s off topic, but I want to say that I agree with this. Support is a big part of GW2, and it’s not rewarded the same as direct damage. If I play my Guardian, heal and protect my team, spread might, pull conditions, and still deal damage (but less than my warrior ally) I don’t get the same credit. Even if it was my support that let the rest of my team muscle through an event.

condition damage shouldnt crit… it just shouldnt… conditions are for wearing down opponents; not bursting
however… condition builds:
- shouldnt suffer from (damaging) condition caps (DoTs should be able to stack alot higher/indefinitely – except confusion… and poison/burning would still be an issue… unless seperate burn/poison stacks were active for each player and ticked simultaineously… but that could be OP… and make it more difficult to stack long duration poison on a healing target)
- should be able to do respectable damage to environmental objects

(trait nitpicks – my necro and mesmer are condition damage builds)
- condition duration in the power tree on professions is annoying… but its for vulnerability and other non damaging conditions (necromancer/ranger/mesmer trees exemplify this well)
- mesmer precision tree annoys me… all the minor traits benefit from condition damage; yet it gives critical damage