Guild Wars 2

Simply put, why? (PvE point of view)

This cap greatly discourages condition damage builds.

5 warrior party with greatswords = steamroll in dungeon runs

5 warrior party with sword/sword = facerolled in dungeons due to dps from condition damage stopping at 25.

Call me elitist scum, but not once have I ever seen condition damage based parties succeed in a timely fashion compared to direct damage parties.

This also discourages variety of builds.

In dungeons….

I Rarely see Pistol/Dagger, or Dagger/Dagger #3 skill EVER being used by thieves,

Sword/Sword warriors, will never get into a experienced group.

More than 1 necromancer gimps the group.

Shortly put, 2 or more condition builds gimp the group.

I have 6 80’s, Full exotics (Warrior, Ranger, Mesmer, Elementalist, Thief, Guardian)
I have tried numerous amounts of builds ranging from full condition damage, to Berserker etc.

My observation, condition damage greatly gimps dungeon parties. (Also I find the healing stat useless in dungeons too but thats for another thread another day)

My plea,

Remove the condition damage caps. I’m bored of seeing only the same berserker/soldier gear groups. (Because it is almost the best way to run things…okay I lied…it IS the best/only way to do dungeons)

I want variety, If I want to take 2 or more condition damage builds in my group, I should be able to with the confidence that they can put in as much weight as my other team members with zerker/support builds and not gimp the entire run.
_

You also forget all the stuff that is immune to Bleeds(and other Conditions) that exists out there. For example, bringing a Condition-speced anything gimps your group horribly in AC Exploration Path 3 due to all the Graveling Burrows you have to knock out on that path.

When I was a newbie I gave it a go with my Scepter-wielding Necromancer. That was not fun. Not fun at all.

Oglaf, yes.

Structures are immune to condition damage and hurt the condition builds the most.

Burrows, Ice pillars, breakable traps etc.

things like the graveling burrows shouldnt be immune to bleeds etc. If we can make ghosts bleed……….

I can think of a few just on top of my head, in addition to AC’s Burrows:

CoE Subject Alpha (breaking friends out of his crystals)
HoTW Fimbul (breaking him out of his ice block to prevent him healing)
HoTW Ginva the Butcher (breaking his Totems)
Ice Elemental boss in Svanir Fractal is a “structure”

And so on.

dont forget siege weapons

There is no feasible reason why Condition Damage is capped at 25 Bleeds. So there must be some sort of technical limitations.

In PvE Condition Damage is gimped in more ways than one though.

1. Condition Damage is…in most cases….significantly lower than Direct Damage. Even 25 Bleeds worth 100 damage are “only” dealing 2500 DPS. Some auto-attacks deal more DPS.

2. You can barely damage objects like , Siege, Barriers, Burrows or Crystal Core (think CoF path 2) with Condition Damage attacks.

3. Condition Removal is readily available in PvP.

4. Can barely “tag” mobs during massive event farming.

5. With lots of professions Condition Damage only synergizes well with very few weapons/skills.

Imo the only viable situations where Condition Damage builds pay off are a) Attrition Builds in PvP or when you are constantly damaging multiple targets.

Condition Damage has been really poorly implemented.

All stackable conditions are capped at 25 stacks. In some cases, that works quite well, but in Bleeding’s case it doesn’t.

Seems like for pve run pow based, and pvp
run condition.

I always wanted to go with a condition build on my guardian, since burning doesn’t stack intensity, but duration, but I don’t know how well that will work, and how much I will gimp myself.

+1 here, i have always wondered why conditions only go to 25, this in itself severely hampers most if not all Ranger Builds in some way or another…

Even to 50 or 75 would open the game up more..

Farzo,

I used to play a Guardian with Power/Precision/Crit Dmg/Condition damage Sword/Torch.

I had my mobs Perma-burned. The condition damage will disappoint you greatly…at least from my personal experience. When I went more precision/crit/power and ditched condition points, the mobs dropped faster….much, much faster.

10point Zeal that gives 10%more damage to burning foes does not add up your burning damage…only direct damage…I could be wrong but this is what i remember.

I think the cap helps balance the game. In GW1 people would find ways to exploit the power of stacking one kind of damage and then only group with the same class to do speed runs and so forth. It messes up the openness of LFG in other words. As it is in GW2 people seem to take diverse groups without a problem so the cap seems to work.

Yes, condition specs are severely gimped in terms of viability in broader game content. The ‘25’ bleed cap, I’m sure, was just a stab at overall balance. The question is balance. Right now condition builds don’t work ‘generally’. For me the two most annoying things I’ve dealt with on a daily basis in condition builds is the slow destruction of environmental objects and failure to meaningfully tag mobs in events. I’ve played them on several professions and like aspects of the condition build, but have found them less effective than power/crit builds especially for post 80 content other than PvP. This is another tuning issue that is competing for development resources with the monthly events we have had sense launch. I would far prefer that the development resources were spent on issues like this rather than events.

By the way, there is no inherent reason for DoT damage to be weaker than direct damage in a game. When I left WoW the affliction warlock was topping the charts in sustained damage. DoTs are just damage delivered differently—it doesn’t need to be weaker in the context of a significant fight.

Think about it like this:
How many stacks of bleeding can someone get in real life???……25 doesn’t seem so bad, now, does it?

Structures need to take at least some kinds of conditions :/ Immunity to bleed/blind/confuse makes sense, but poison could be acid, burning makes sense, so does vuln…

More heavy armour enemies (since conditions ignore armour) would be nice too.

And those stacks… why even have a limit…It’s as stupid as the aoe limit.

It’s a limitation so things are not easy.

For example, take big world dragons, they have 25 stacks 24/7, without the limitation, probably up to 100, meaning he would go down way faster.

They don’t want us to do events fast, because fun obviously lies in the time you have to spend to kill something.

Who cares about spec balance?

Pustulio.8207:

Think about it like this:
How many stacks of bleeding can someone get in real life???……25 doesn’t seem so bad, now, does it?

How many stealths can someone do in real life?
How many spells can someone cast in real life?
How many aegis can someone apply in real life?
How many ressurections can someone do in real life?
How many waypoints can you teleport to in real life?
How many dragons can you fight in real life?

Thank goodness you came along wish such a great argument to open eyes!

I think he was beeing sarcastic, or something, or else i’d feel sorry for him, defending this kitten.

It would be nice if every profession would have its unique conditions stacks. So you won’t override necro’s bleeds with your warrior etc.

The stack caps will still be there, but now classes would not interfere with each other.

Did any of you consider that it may be due to technical restraints?

Due to the way bleeding stacks, and given the fact that the damage is updated whenever the condition damage of the owner changes, imagine how things would be without a cap. Tracking all possible bleeds from over a hundred sources may be a bit too much to handle during something as stressful as a world boss.

Having said that, condition builds do seem a bit weak currently, but the damage isn’t mitigated by armor and once the stack’s on there, it keeps ticking unlike power builds that have to keep attacking. Maybe that evens things out in Anet’s eyes?

ThiBash.5634:

Did any of you consider that it may be due to technical restraints?

Due to the way bleeding stacks, and given the fact that the damage is updated whenever the condition damage of the owner changes, imagine how things would be without a cap. Tracking all possible bleeds from over a hundred sources may be a bit too much to handle during something as stressful as a world boss.

Other MMOs can handle unique conditions from every class and character without problems, why GW2 should have issues?

I am glad you posted your concern/observation (no sarcasm). The more people bring up this issue the more likely it will be addressed!

I started a discussion on this in the Suggestions forum a week or so ago (49 replies so far).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Bleed-Stack-Plan/first#post1159356

I also participated in a conversation about this more than three months ago in which Jon Peters agreed that this was an issue.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/No-love-for-condition-builds/page/2#post621056

Keep up the discussion in the hopes that the development team responds to us.

Ulari

It’s capped because of PvP. Since PvE balance is not as important, this is not a high priority issue.

Even when they do change something, direct damage will probably always stay better than conditions in PvE, since conditions ignore armor/protection.

It will get sorted out eventually.

Pinch
I do not think PvP needs the bleed cap to maintain balance.

If a direct damage character can do 8,000 damage in 5 seconds, the game allows 5 direct damage characters to do 40,000 damage in five seconds.

But for conditions… if a character can apply and maintain 15 stacks of bleeding, subsequent characters cannot also apply 15 stacks of bleeding on the target. Only the first character gets to do his full damage, the second character gets to apply 2/3 (the 10 remaining available stacks), and the next three characters can apply no bleeding…

Imagine if when a target took ‘too much’ direct damage they got a damage shield to protect them form any more damage for the next few seconds. It would be infuriating to have your damage not count because someone else attacked the target just before you. That is where condition damage is now… it is easiest to see in events, but it is also happening in dungeons, and in PvP.

Ulari

Well son, it’s verry simple you see… women can only bleed from 25 places and since we became smarter in the last century, we developed equal rights between men and women. So it’s normal for male characters to have the same rights u see. And as 1 bleeding hole opens another one closes… uuuh.. well uuh, now u know why there’s a limit on bleeding stacks

I have a strange feeling that the wiki is completely wrong about bleeding that it does only one tick of damage a second. In many cases on reaching the 20-25 bleed cap solo, I’ve found that it tick much rapidly than at the 5-10 bleed stack rate. Is there anyone with a good explanation for this?

Kid Taylor.5479:

I have a strange feeling that the wiki is completely wrong about bleeding that it does only one tick of damage a second. In many cases on reaching the 20-25 bleed cap solo, I’ve found that it tick much rapidly than at the 5-10 bleed stack rate. Is there anyone with a good explanation for this?

Each bleed ticks individually, so if you have 10 instead of 5 there would be 10 individual ticks, at whatever points in time they have been a whole number number of seconds after application, instead of 5.

So, one tick per second per stack, right? This means that another way of think about stacks of bleeding is actually rate of bleeding. 10 stacks is 10 ticks/second, while 25 stacks is 25 ticks/second. Is that right?

psybako.1903:

So, one tick per second per stack, right? This means that another way of think about stacks of bleeding is actually rate of bleeding. 10 stacks is 10 ticks/second, while 25 stacks is 25 ticks/second. Is that right?

Yeah basically.
Also remember that each individual stack has its own condition damage value. They may be the same (due to being from the same person) but separate people may do different amounts.

No, it’s one tick per sec.

Despite how many numbers you are actually seeing flying out of the person, their HP only drops in one large chunk once per second. At least from what I’ve seen.

Also, the issue isn’t that bleed is capped at 25 stacks. It’s that 1 or 2 players alone can hit the cap far too easily.

I mean no one screams about confusion being capped at 25 stacks because no one ever reaches the full 25 stacks often enough to complain about it.

And if they are that worried about bleed in SPVP they can do what they did with confusion, half damage.

Keep in mind that, in the end, there will also be mobs that inflict “full stacks” of bleeding. WvW was balanced around PvE as well, am I right?

Any update on this?

I read through the forums but I see no recent posts on condition damage or bleed stacks?

It has been four months since ArenaNet (Jon Peters) acknowledged that the 25 stack limit on bleeds was an issue in group environments (dungeons, PvP, and events).

Ulari

No update from Anet about this at all? Been waiting for some kind fix, or at least an update of a plan of a fix would be nice. Finding myself logging in less and less. Don’t think I’m going to make it much longer. lol

Anet said they were working on a fix. All we can do is wait :p

It’s capped because Anet said the servers have to keep track and store every single duration on every mob in every zone. They have to keep track of the damage and duration of all of these.

People already complain about lag now, could you imagine how bad it would be in WvW or dragon events with necros putting 200+ bleed stacks on something.

Ethics.4519:

It’s capped because Anet said the servers have to keep track and store every single duration on every mob in every zone. They have to keep track of the damage and duration of all of these.

People already complain about lag now, could you imagine how bad it would be in WvW or dragon events with necros putting 200+ bleed stacks on something.

badly coding your game is not a valid excuse

Tying stacks to players doesn’t seem to negatively affect performance in any other game, I don’t buy that excuse.

Either way if it’s an issue just make bleeds like confusion. Harder to apply, more damaging. It’s very hard to reach the confusion cap. Maybe do something similar with vulnerability.

And fix the traits that increase damage to work with conditions, that’s a ridiculous oversight.

raptor.1064:

Ethics.4519:

It’s capped because Anet said the servers have to keep track and store every single duration on every mob in every zone. They have to keep track of the damage and duration of all of these.

People already complain about lag now, could you imagine how bad it would be in WvW or dragon events with necros putting 200+ bleed stacks on something.

badly coding your game is not a valid excuse

Who’s to determine the validity of an “excuse”? Just because you don’t like the answer, it’s automatically invalid. They gave their reasons, just deal with it. Besides, it’s always better to balance your character damage on Conditions and Direct damage.

raptor.1064:

Ethics.4519:

It’s capped because Anet said the servers have to keep track and store every single duration on every mob in every zone. They have to keep track of the damage and duration of all of these.

People already complain about lag now, could you imagine how bad it would be in WvW or dragon events with necros putting 200+ bleed stacks on something.

badly coding your game is not a valid excuse

^

This. Pretty much the same discussion as culling. Every other MMORPG in the past 15 years has dealt with the issue more effectively for the players than GW2.

Yes, for the love of all that is balanced and holy. FIX CONDITIONS!!! I play a necro as my main. I prefer to play a staff condition build. Therefore, i carry an EXTRA set of exotics around with me at all times just in case i want to join a party and run some dungeons etc. This way i can switch to a damage build and not feel like the leech running around just trying to stay alive while swinging my wet noodle scepter.

raptor.1064:

Ethics.4519:

It’s capped because Anet said the servers have to keep track and store every single duration on every mob in every zone. They have to keep track of the damage and duration of all of these.

People already complain about lag now, could you imagine how bad it would be in WvW or dragon events with necros putting 200+ bleed stacks on something.

badly coding your game is not a valid excuse

Exactly. Other MMO’s can do this fine, why not GW2? Also, I’m unsure why everyone goes with 200+ cap? I’d be happy with a 50 cap. Or if the issue is so HUGE and coding so difficult. Then raise it to 30 at least, or increase the DMG per TICK. Which I think needs to be done anyway as Burst Dmg still out damages condition in most cases.

Really would just love some attention to conditions period. Or some word from them. The lack of both is uninspiring at the least.

Yes, it is a FACT that it is a technical restriction, not a gameplay restriction. Every stack is individually tracked by the server. If 25 stacks was the max per caster, not per target, a group of 5 condition players in a dungeon would be applying 125 stacks to a target and obviously this would break something on their end.

I don’t think they prefer it this way, but it’s all they can do.

Aristio.2784:

raptor.1064:

Ethics.4519:

It’s capped because Anet said the servers have to keep track and store every single duration on every mob in every zone. They have to keep track of the damage and duration of all of these.

People already complain about lag now, could you imagine how bad it would be in WvW or dragon events with necros putting 200+ bleed stacks on something.

badly coding your game is not a valid excuse

Who’s to determine the validity of an “excuse”? Just because you don’t like the answer, it’s automatically invalid. They gave their reasons, just deal with it. Besides, it’s always better to balance your character damage on Conditions and Direct damage.

Lol, yes, thank you. I’m just providing this thread with the information they gave. I’m not saying it’s fair or reasonable.

You can sit here and talk all you want about the cap hurts conditions builds, but that doesn’t address the root cause.

One way to rework bleed would be to have the stack drop by one each damage tick rather than run a separate timer for each unit of the stack. They could also reduce the workload further by calculating the damage on application rather than pr tick.

If they still wanted mid combat stat changes to have an effect they could have it change if the new damage was higher than the old. Then it could even become valuable to maintain a stack once a high value was achieved so that it didn’t reset.

They could even run a single track for the whole zerg, with the highest damage character dictating the overall damage, but all the rest helping in maintaining a large stack. Meaning that one 80 and a bunch of newbies could cooperate on maintaining a high damage stack. And the stack size itself would in essence act as a damage multiplier.

Why does nobody complain about boon stacking?

Two people giving regeneration is a waste because it only stacks once (I know it stacks in duration)!? Bleeding at least stacks up to 25 in intensity.

Imagine two guardians seeing a champion preparing its kill-every-thing-with-one-hit-skill. Both guardians spread their aegis…no stacking one save-party-from-instant-death wasted.

There are many thinks that don’t stack:

• Soothing Mist
• Strength in Numbers
• Battle Presence

Why isn’t that a problem and bleeding is?

TheBlueI.3486:

Why does nobody complain about boon stacking?

Two people giving regeneration is a waste because it only stacks once (I know it stacks in duration)!? Bleeding at least stacks up to 25 in intensity.

Imagine two guardians seeing a champion preparing its kill-every-thing-with-one-hit-skill. Both guardians spread their aegis…no stacking one save-party-from-instant-death wasted.

There are many thinks that don’t stack:

• Soothing Mist
• Strength in Numbers
• Battle Presence

Why isn’t that a problem and bleeding is?

I think it’s easier for people to accept yes or no, to does it stack or not.

But once you get into, lets cap it on 25. It becomes “why not 30? why not 35? why not 40?”

The bleeding cap, as well other caps are there for a reason: PvP balance.

Im PvE conditions tend to be a lil underpowered if compared to Direct Damage.

Unless, all of sudden, mobs gain a lot more armor and the only way to bring them down is by conditions.

I guess ANet forgot that things that work well in PvP, not exactly do the same in PvE.

In PvE theres loads of monsters with way more HP/Armor than most of the players.

To correct this, the first thing they must do is split the rules from PvE to PvP.

A “PvE-only” version of bleed, could:

- Increase or remove the cap, or

Keep the current cap but:

- Making them subject to hit critically, or

- Increase the value of the tick proportionally with the number of stacks. To say 5 stacks of bleed do 50 dmg, 10 stacks of bleed could inflict 150dmg, etc..

This issue has been discussed since beta.
John Peters acknowledged it was an issue and they were looking for solutions in October.
John Peters acknowledged it was an issue and they were looking for solutions in February.
But… we still have no update on what will be done to fix it, or when it may be fixed.

I am frustrated… I have seen the build diversity go down as folks realize the only way to guarantee your damage is to go direct damage.

And, simply raising the cap cannot be the answer. As a Warrior, or a Neco, or a Mesmer I can hit 25 stacks of bleeding on a training golem before it dies. I do not want ANet to raise the bleed cap and have to re-balance bleeding when Mesmers, Warriors, Necros, etc. can get more than 25 stacks of bleeding on a boss or a champion.

Whatever the solution is, it should ensure that I do the same condition damage when I am in a group as I do when I am solo.

Until then condition damage is dead… unless you are playing this MMO in really small organized groups with only one condition focused character… or you are playing by yourself.

Ulari