Guild Wars 2

It’s been too long since the last update. They had better be working on a complete overhaul.

Fire-and-forget conditions is a possible solution: make condition duration and damage-per-tick be determined at the instant of application. That way you save TONS of data transfers and computations by not having to compute new durations and damage-per-ticks every single second.

It would not require a complete overhaul of the way conditions work… and I think could possibly remove the 25 stack limit (to be replaced perhaps by a limit of how many new conditions can be applied per second)

Dual.8953:

It is a technical limitation because Condition Damage is a stat. If all condi damage didn’t scale with stats, they could make the limit way higher but as it stands the system would have to calculate every condition on a target, and the condi stat of it’s caster every second. In a fight like a world boss where they always have max conditions on the boss that would create a massive delay in whatever function dictates damage.

An average home CPU, say an Intel i7 3930, can perform billions of floating point math operations every second, most commercial servers and leading edge home computers can get up in to the trillions of calculations pers second, yet there’s a technical limitation that prevents a few dozen people from having private stacks of damage? Can’t be much more than a few hundred stacks in a very busy event. Less that 100 total for an average event…even if every user is applying every condition possible. Perhaps a few million calculations on a given server at any given time. If there are technical limitations it’s in the software design.

Leamas.5803:

Dual.8953:

It is a technical limitation because Condition Damage is a stat. If all condi damage didn’t scale with stats, they could make the limit way higher but as it stands the system would have to calculate every condition on a target, and the condi stat of it’s caster every second. In a fight like a world boss where they always have max conditions on the boss that would create a massive delay in whatever function dictates damage.

An average home CPU, say an Intel i7 3930, can perform billions of floating point math operations every second, most commercial servers and leading edge home computers can get up in to the trillions of calculations pers second, yet there’s a technical limitation that prevents a few dozen people from having private stacks of damage? Can’t be much more than a few hundred stacks in a very busy event. Less that 100 total for an average event…even if every user is applying every condition possible. Perhaps a few million calculations on a given server at any given time. If there are technical limitations it’s in the software design.

It isn’t a computational limit, but a bandwidth one. Apparently the server keeps track of all conditions on a target so that they can’t be manipulated client side(if this is even possible, I’m not sure – doubtful, though). When one person puts a condition, say, a stack of bleeding on a target, every other person who has that NPC targeted (or maybe just everyone in the area in general, idk), will have to receive that information. So, the server is sending that information out to all relevant players and doing calculations.

I don’t believe that increasing the cap for AoE limit and/or condition stacks would put such a strain on the server so as to become unplayable. I think it is just a way to say that it is for balancing purposes. If you think about it, being able to get an unlimited number of stacks of bleeding on a boss would trivialize the content even further. One necro/warrior can easily get 25 stacks of bleeding, and world events/bosses are huge. I can easily imagine at least 200 stacks of bleeding being possible with no cap.

Spicyhash.7605:

It isn’t a computational limit, but a bandwidth one. Apparently the server keeps track of all conditions on a target so that they can’t be manipulated client side(if this is even possible, I’m not sure – doubtful, though). When one person puts a condition, say, a stack of bleeding on a target, every other person who has that NPC targeted (or maybe just everyone in the area in general, idk), will have to receive that information. So, the server is sending that information out to all relevant players and doing calculations.

I don’t believe that increasing the cap for AoE limit and/or condition stacks would put such a strain on the server so as to become unplayable. I think it is just a way to say that it is for balancing purposes. If you think about it, being able to get an unlimited number of stacks of bleeding on a boss would trivialize the content even further. One necro/warrior can easily get 25 stacks of bleeding, and world events/bosses are huge. I can easily imagine at least 200 stacks of bleeding being possible with no cap.

If this is the case, getting rid of the shared condition stacks and giving everyone their own private stacks solves the problem, since then all the server has to return is the player specific data rather than all the data for every player. Total damage from all players can easily be calculated server side without affecting bandwidth.

As for removing the stack trivializing content, it’s no different than adding a pile of zerkers to the mix since direct damage is completely uncapped. It’s a group balance issue. Direct damage users can stack their damage indefinitely and add as many players as are available, while even a single condition user typically can’t even come close to applying their full damage in a group. Like I said in a previous post, already at level 40 my guard in all rares is more effective in a group than my 80 necro in exotics/ascended. This should not be the case. There is a good reason dungeon groups often specify no necro/no condi/DPS only…because the cap makes them ineffective in groups. A condi necro is very good for solo PvE as well as in WvW and perhaps the strongest build in PvP. But it’s absolutely terrible in groups because their damage does not scale up like a physical damage user.

Ulari.9547:

Dual.8953:

It is a technical limitation because Condition Damage is a stat. If all condi damage didn’t scale with stats, they could make the limit way higher but as it stands the system would have to calculate every condition on a target, and the condi stat of it’s caster every second. In a fight like a world boss where they always have max conditions on the boss that would create a massive delay in whatever function dictates damage.

If the argument is ‘the engine can not handle conditions from multiple players’ then there are several possible conclusions:
1. The engine is broken
2. The condition mechanic is badly designed
3. Condition specs should not be in the game (since the engine can not handle them)

But…
This is an MMO (many players)
It is group friendly (no tagging/claiming mobs)
It has huge world events and boss fights
Every class can generate conditions and many classes ‘lean’ towards condition builds

It appears the devs intended there to be condition focused characters.
And it appears the devs intended people to play together and attack the same mobs/bosses

And the devs have said that condition damage is a problem they are looking into (in October 2012 and February 2013).

Given the above facts/observations/conclusions… I still say They need to fix it

Ulari

Agree 100% with what Ulari is saying. While building stacks of bleed/confusion/torment and extending a burn is a more interesting mechanic than a more standard DoT, it seems unwise to build for “more interesting in PvP/solo” but “useless in PvE group content, particularly the large group content the game focuses on.”

Servanin.5021:

- Destructible objects are immune to bleeds

I’m going to be honest, i lol’d at this one…of course they don’t bleed, they are objects, they aren’t alive!

UrMom.4205:

Servanin.5021:

- Destructible objects are immune to bleeds

I’m going to be honest, i lol’d at this one…of course they don’t bleed, they are objects, they aren’t alive!

But stone elementals and ghosts etc. you are ok with?

UrMom.4205:

Servanin.5021:

- Destructible objects are immune to bleeds

I’m going to be honest, i lol’d at this one…of course they don’t bleed, they are objects, they aren’t alive!

I think bleed is more of a concept than anything…kind of like cuts or scratches. It should perhaps be more effective against living creatures, but there should be some sort of base damage one can cause against inanimate objects such as the graveling mounds in AC P3 so that one isn’t completely useless. Much of the necro’s direct damage is minions and while they’re fine in PvE, in dungeons they can quickly attract unwanted attention and are easily distracted when attacked.

I think the problem comes from a single design flaw, but I might be wrong.

The design flaw is the following : might affects conditions you already had on a target.
Because of this, the engine needs to keep track of all the individual conditions in a target, their times, their ticks, and receive info of the player in order to increment/decrease those.
Its a huge deal to process all this.

There would be a simple solution: might only affects the conditions that you put on a target while being under its effects.

No longer any need to keep track of individual condition stacks.
If you put a bleed for 4 ticks, the 4 ticks are processend imediately and added to the next 4 damage ticks. If during that time another player puts a bleed for 6 ticks, it works the same.
I don’t see a reason to keep track of individual damage. on single cyclic data buffer for the next X damage ticks for a given condition and it works fine.
Ticks for first player : 100dgm 100dmg 100dmg 100dmg 0 0 0 0
A player puts 3 ticks of bleed one second later
Ticks for second player :100dmg 100 dmg 100dmg 0 0 0

The buffer of damage looks like that when the first player applies the bleed :
100
100
100
100
0
0
0
0

On second later, the other player hits, it becoms this:
200
200
200
0
0
0

Simple, clean not heavy on processing.

Of course, you loose might effect on previous conditions, but it is so much better that loosing your overall conditions.

If they can’t fix it, a lot of Necro skills and talents need updates.

Half of the necro class in built around conditions – it’s like they designed the class for a different game where conditions were uncapped.

Remove multiple stacks per player.

So for a player conditions either just grow in damage or duration; that’s it.

Instantly you’d need 25 players each applying a bleed to hit the cap, instead of just one being able to do so.

It’d alleviate the issue. Not sure how technically challenging it is.

^ At least that way condition players could do 100% of the damage they could do when soloing while in groups!

What if all conditions were removed from the game?

Damage over time effects would be removed but, not control effects. Chill, cripple, blind and poison (-50% healing) would be control effects like stun, knockbacks and knockdowns. What if stacking control effects had a diminishing return on the duration instead of an increase?

Condition damage on gear would have to be swapped to either power, precision or crit damage. Condition damage on traits changed to direct damage.

I really like condition damage. Attrition is a fun concept in most games but in GW2 it’s constantly being pushed under the rug.

I don’t know why devs have been so silent on this. A number of months ago they told us it was a technical limitation of the servers to remove the cap but didn’t give us any idea as to how they are trying to work around it.

They introduce new healing skills to promote “build diversity” but ignore the fact that their own game mechanics are breaking dozens of potential builds in PVE.

If the technical limitations are true then figure out another way to balance condition damage. Here are a couple of ways I can think of right now:
*Make conditions “bust” if they reach a cap, doing a percentage of the overall damage that would have been done if the stack had been allowed to continue.
*Make single stack conditions (Poison and Burning) have stronger control effects and no damage.
*Scale bleeding differently in PVE so it’s much harder to apply but does more damage per application.

There are probably dozens of creative ways to get around this that it feels like they aren’t willing to try.

If the technical limitations are simply not true Devote some manpower into fixing it! Currently PVE is NOT really play how you want. I don’t feel effective at all when I play a condition build and I feel like I’m being a hindrance on my team if I’m not building berserker. I want to be able to bring something unique to the table when I join a party, not just slightly more or less damage…

I guess part of the problem is that it’s not just the cap that’s the problem.

Lots of bosses cleanse all conditions in PvE – which means all of them would need to change. Same with structure-type bosses.

And all those people saying ‘structures don’t bleed’ … gah most of the direct weapon damage doesn’t make sense either. If that’s the case then your swords should break in half when you stab a stone golem.

I disagree that attrition tactics is allowed to be viable with the existence of dodge. It would make more sense to me to make the gameplay focus more on direct damage and have players use their tools and judgement by making split second decisions that could cost them their lives.

Alternatively, healing effects should all be interruptible, have cooldowns no lower than 30 seconds and have 3+ second cast times.

BeoErgon.9107:

I don’t see a reason to keep track of individual damage. on single cyclic data buffer for the next X damage ticks for a given condition and it works fine.
Ticks for first player : 100dgm 100dmg 100dmg 100dmg 0 0 0 0
A player puts 3 ticks of bleed one second later
Ticks for second player :100dmg 100 dmg 100dmg 0 0 0

BeoErgon.9107:

It is simple, clean, and lighter on processing.

Of course, you lose (sorry, pet peeve) the might effect on previous conditions, but it is so much better than losing your overall conditions.

The problem with the above is actually the same problem WoW had – synchronization. It is pretty rare that player 2 will apply their condition exactly on a 1 second boundary after the first player does. What happens when player 2 applies his or her condition 1.01s later? Do the ticks wait until the 2 second mark?

Actually, bleeds are a little too easy, because they do damage on an interval basis. Let’s try confusion. The damage resolves at the moment that the enemy performs a skill. Using the above system, how do you simply calculate the correct number of stacks for an arbitrary time, given confusion stacks which may all have different timers? Remember, each confusion application can have different durations and damage per tick, and the goal is to remove the cap on stacks globally and per player.

We should actually step back a moment and look at our base assumptions, because I can see a problem with calculating the damage only upon initial application (also an issue in WoW’s system). It’s trivial to game the system to get massively overpowered damage.

Right now, if you have 1 second of 25 might, you get 1 second of benefit to your damage. With the proposed system, the best way to game the system is to align large stacks of buffs with the cooldown timers of the skills which produce the longest duration conditions. Instead of getting 1 second of benefit from that 25 stack of might, you now get 10 seconds for skill A, 20 seconds for skill B, and 5 seconds for skill C.

Power builds still get 1 second of benefit. Condition builds get between 1 and N seconds of benefit, where N is some calculation based upon the optimal condition skill rotation one can pull off in a 1 second interval.

But there’s more! You also have to consider fields and how quickly they can apply stacks when you consider what removing a cap on stacks would do. If someone tosses up any of several mesmer fields, you now have to add a condition stack of several seconds for every projectile fired while the field is up. The confusion stacks given by the projectile finishers can be set up to game might stacks as well.

It is not quite as simple a problem as it seems.

^ So how did the-game-that-shall-not-be-named address that?

I applaud all efforts to try to make conditions work in GW2, mechanically speaking of coarse. I think they got way over their heads when it comes to calculating the condition durations, stacking and intensity variables.

You know, engineers have a saying. Keep it simple, stupid.

DanteZero.9736:

Condition damage wasn’t so great back in GW1 too, but at the time, conditions dealt a set amount of damage and was capped. Also, the durations were reset on application if I remember correctly.

The problem with condition builds in gw1 was that it applied a DoT that was based on the condition . Not to mention that RC (restore condition prot monk) was fairly common to bring into GvG or HA. The conditions were reset on application as you said.

Condi pressure builds were incredibly reliant on shutting down the prot monk from removing them.

Talk about broken mechanic. I fail to understand as well why the condition cap is per monster, and not per attacking player. For example my necro stacks 25 bleeds on boss and that’s MY 25 stacks, i can go no further. But the thief next to me has 10 stacks of his bleed on it and he can still do 15 more.

As a programmer myself (webmaster) i can easily tell that “technical difficulties” sounds very unrealistic to me. The monsters have the ability to take damage from many sources and calculate it just fine. Including condi damage and maths to calculate how long and strong. Just that 25 stacks cap per monster instead of per player. Someone is a sloppy coder there i say.

Servanin.5021:

- Destructible objects are immune to bleeds

I think it would be dumber if you could bleed a tent to destroy it.

ATMAvatar.5749:

BeoErgon.9107:

I don’t see a reason to keep track of individual damage. on single cyclic data buffer for the next X damage ticks for a given condition and it works fine.
Ticks for first player : 100dgm 100dmg 100dmg 100dmg 0 0 0 0
A player puts 3 ticks of bleed one second later
Ticks for second player :100dmg 100 dmg 100dmg 0 0 0

BeoErgon.9107:

It is simple, clean, and lighter on processing.

Of course, you lose (sorry, pet peeve) the might effect on previous conditions, but it is so much better than losing your overall conditions.

The problem with the above is actually the same problem WoW had – synchronization. It is pretty rare that player 2 will apply their condition exactly on a 1 second boundary after the first player does. What happens when player 2 applies his or her condition 1.01s later? Do the ticks wait until the 2 second mark?

Actually, bleeds are a little too easy, because they do damage on an interval basis. Let’s try confusion. The damage resolves at the moment that the enemy performs a skill. Using the above system, how do you simply calculate the correct number of stacks for an arbitrary time, given confusion stacks which may all have different timers? Remember, each confusion application can have different durations and damage per tick, and the goal is to remove the cap on stacks globally and per player.

We should actually step back a moment and look at our base assumptions, because I can see a problem with calculating the damage only upon initial application (also an issue in WoW’s system). It’s trivial to game the system to get massively overpowered damage.

Right now, if you have 1 second of 25 might, you get 1 second of benefit to your damage. With the proposed system, the best way to game the system is to align large stacks of buffs with the cooldown timers of the skills which produce the longest duration conditions. Instead of getting 1 second of benefit from that 25 stack of might, you now get 10 seconds for skill A, 20 seconds for skill B, and 5 seconds for skill C.

Power builds still get 1 second of benefit. Condition builds get between 1 and N seconds of benefit, where N is some calculation based upon the optimal condition skill rotation one can pull off in a 1 second interval.

But there’s more! You also have to consider fields and how quickly they can apply stacks when you consider what removing a cap on stacks would do. If someone tosses up any of several mesmer fields, you now have to add a condition stack of several seconds for every projectile fired while the field is up. The confusion stacks given by the projectile finishers can be set up to game might stacks as well.

It is not quite as simple a problem as it seems.

No system is perfect. Rounding to an asynchronous internal tick clock to the mob is the best way to go. Ticks should have to wait for the next internal clock period, yes. I don’t see a problem with this. Always better waiting a second for the condition to start ticking than loosing it all.

Confusion can just use the same table. Confusion damage can be stored. Each tick the pointer in the table moves up. If the enemy attacks you get the damage of the current pointer. Can’t see a problem here neither. Further confusion stacking just adds the damage values in the table for the next X periods.

For the might you are right, but again I can’t see a problem. A direct damage dealer with 25 stacks of might gets FULL benefit from it if he attacks. Why should condition users only get 25 might on one tick? The 25 might must apply to the total duration of the condition you apply when under its effects. Don’t forget that condition damage is like direct damage but spread in time. The might multiplier should apply for all the duration. I don’t see why not. Remember too that with my proposal you don’t get benefit of the 25 might for conditions already on the mob; how many conditions can you put under 1 second might? One? Two at most?

For fields… There are some skills that can put several condition damages at the same time, true. But again, how is this different than direct damage? With my mesmer I surely can’t put conditions faster that my sword main attack.

The word is: every direct damage attack is fully applied to a mod. Condition should work too.

Is my solution perfect? I am sure not. But it can work.

Because condition damage… does not go away when you dodge, while direct damage does?

Sirendor.1394:

Because condition damage… does not go away when you dodge, while direct damage does?

But condition damage can be removed and there goes all your stacks… Oh, and it can be dodged too.

I think it’s because conditions are broken at the conceptual level, and they just can’t get their head around how to fix them without completely overhauling the game.

You can’t touch anything on conditions without touching all of them. Control, interrupts, DPS, debuffs, everything done to a target by every skill ever are all covered by this one, single mechanic. On top of that, the mechanic is both excessively complicated (on the hardware end) and limited (on the user’s end) due to it’s design. IMO, the entire thing should be tossed and rebuilt from the ground up. It’s really that bad of a system.

Conditions are the single worst gameplay mechanic in the entire game. Almost (but not quite) the worst I’ve ever seen in an mmo. You can’t touch it without simultaneously touching every class, every NPC, every combo field and finisher, every PVE encounter, every PVP encoutner, and almost every skill in the game. I can see why ANET just ignores the problem instead of dealing with it.

Rhyse.8179:

I think it’s because conditions are broken at the conceptual level, and they just can’t get their head around how to fix them without completely overhauling the game.

You can’t touch anything on conditions without touching all of them. Control, interrupts, DPS, debuffs, everything done to a target by every skill ever are all covered by this one, single mechanic. On top of that, the mechanic is both excessively complicated (on the hardware end) and limited (on the user’s end) due to it’s design. IMO, the entire thing should be tossed and rebuilt from the ground up. It’s really that bad of a system.

Conditions are the single worst gameplay mechanic in the entire game. Almost (but not quite) the worst I’ve ever seen in an mmo. You can’t touch it without simultaneously touching every class, every NPC, every combo field and finisher, every PVE encounter, every PVP encoutner, and almost every skill in the game. I can see why ANET just ignores the problem instead of dealing with it.

I guess this is much true. Sad… But true.
Still, I hope that when they coded conditions they did centralize the condition handling code in the game engine and not at class/mob level. Changing it would be risky, but I don’t believe it would need any rework of the principal mechanics.

They can even code alternative condition damage handling in parallel to the current method and use logs to see if it is consistent before making the switch.

I believe the issue might be with the actual ticking nature of conditions. I always felt that odd.

As the very first condition is applied to a mob, the timer for that condition starts. After that, as long as that condition is applied from any source, it ticks once every second, taking into account the stacks and the stats of those applying the stacks. Once every second from all sources, the ticking moment determined by the moment when that condition was first applied.

The old bleeding damage indicators looked good, as if the damage was actually seeping from the victim, but the new indicator showed its true nature(if you didnt figure already just by looking at the massive health-drop of weaker enemies when your 15bleeds ticked once with no direct damage being done to them at that time).

Why is this a problem?

Take a look at direct damage. It is inflicted when the attack is successfull. A Hundred Blades attack deals its damage regardless of the fact that 0.02 seconds after its first strike, another Hundred Blades is starting to damage the enemy from another warrior. Then only 0.004 seconds later an elementalists Lightning Strike hits for full damage again. A thief backtabs 0.2 seconds later, an engineer starts her FlameJet (flamethrower #1) at the same time. During the next second up to 80 new direct damage is inflicted from 80+ sources (many attacks damage more than once per second). Its a Big Zerg. The amount of calculations in that one second blows my mind.

Lets jump back to that moment when the first Hundred Blades started to inflict damage. Lets say the full bleed stack was already applied at that time, and conveniently enough, it ticks at the same moment when that 1st HB starts inflicting damage. In the one second while 80+ direct damage sources are accounted for from the direct damage attacks, the bleed stack does nothing. Its probably busy determining which applied bleed should even count for the next tick.

During that 1 second, a necromancer’s Grasping dead (3bleeds) overwrites another engineer’s shrapnel grenades (16 seconds, 3 explosions with 3 bleeds if traited) that the engineer just threw 0.8 second earlier. Because no sane person brings condition builds to PvE boss zergs, lets say that only about 20 skills with bleed happen in that same second. Some inflict more bleeds than others. Among the last few, an elementalist who must have misclicked to earth attunement, started throwing Stone Daggers, and overwrote the necros Grasping Dead bleeds just before the global bleed tick happened. Fun fact, that ele was a specced berzerker with no Condition Dmage investment. Blame his misclick on his lag.

So while 80+ direct damages were calculated down to the moment of each of their respective inflictions, only 25 bleed damages were calculated only once, on the moment of the global bleed tick moment for that boss.

Now, i dont know how to fix this. But its obvious that the rate of calculation between direct damage and condition damage is highly unbalanced.

That age old question

“How to make a wall bleed” … Seriously.. your shocked that objects cannot bleed -.-

Sirendor.1394:

Because condition damage… does not go away when you dodge, while direct damage does?

You can dodge condition attack. Dodged that attack = dodged 2000 dmg in the following 5 secs.

While I think condition damage needs looked at, especially from multiple sources, the thing to remember is most conditions do other things besides/with damage. Confusion, torment, bleed, poison and burning hurt, with poison causing reduced heals while up. Cripple, immobilize, weakness, blind, vulnerability, fear (without traits) and chill don’t hurt at all, although vulnerability factors into direct damage.

So 7/12 do no damage normally, with one of those modifying direct damage received based on stacks. 5/12 do damage, 1 of those 5 causes a seperate effect. This signifies to me that conditions, while valid damage sources, have greater utility as obstacles inflicted on other players and would be too powerful if they competed in damage stakes as well as causing all these statuses.

I think conditions from 1 player is fine, but burning and poison certainly need some love when applied from multiple players.

lakdav.3694:

I believe the issue might be with the actual ticking nature of conditions. I always felt that odd.

As the very first condition is applied to a mob, the timer for that condition starts. After that, as long as that condition is applied from any source, it ticks once every second, taking into account the stacks and the stats of those applying the stacks. Once every second from all sources, the ticking moment determined by the moment when that condition was first applied.

The old bleeding damage indicators looked good, as if the damage was actually seeping from the victim, but the new indicator showed its true nature(if you didnt figure already just by looking at the massive health-drop of weaker enemies when your 15bleeds ticked once with no direct damage being done to them at that time).

Why is this a problem?

Take a look at direct damage. It is inflicted when the attack is successfull. A Hundred Blades attack deals its damage regardless of the fact that 0.02 seconds after its first strike, another Hundred Blades is starting to damage the enemy from another warrior. Then only 0.004 seconds later an elementalists Lightning Strike hits for full damage again. A thief backtabs 0.2 seconds later, an engineer starts her FlameJet (flamethrower #1) at the same time. During the next second up to 80 new direct damage is inflicted from 80+ sources (many attacks damage more than once per second). Its a Big Zerg. The amount of calculations in that one second blows my mind.

Lets jump back to that moment when the first Hundred Blades started to inflict damage. Lets say the full bleed stack was already applied at that time, and conveniently enough, it ticks at the same moment when that 1st HB starts inflicting damage. In the one second while 80+ direct damage sources are accounted for from the direct damage attacks, the bleed stack does nothing. Its probably busy determining which applied bleed should even count for the next tick.

During that 1 second, a necromancer’s Grasping dead (3bleeds) overwrites another engineer’s shrapnel grenades (16 seconds, 3 explosions with 3 bleeds if traited) that the engineer just threw 0.8 second earlier. Because no sane person brings condition builds to PvE boss zergs, lets say that only about 20 skills with bleed happen in that same second. Some inflict more bleeds than others. Among the last few, an elementalist who must have misclicked to earth attunement, started throwing Stone Daggers, and overwrote the necros Grasping Dead bleeds just before the global bleed tick happened. Fun fact, that ele was a specced berzerker with no Condition Dmage investment. Blame his misclick on his lag.

So while 80+ direct damages were calculated down to the moment of each of their respective inflictions, only 25 bleed damages were calculated only once, on the moment of the global bleed tick moment for that boss.

Now, i dont know how to fix this. But its obvious that the rate of calculation between direct damage and condition damage is highly unbalanced.

As you point out here, at billions/trillions of calculations per second for modern processors, processor power is not the problem. The claim is that there is a bandwidth issue, which I don’t buy any more than anyone who claims the calculations are too complex. God, hire a mathematician for a day to write the algorithms, it’s all straight algebra, so they’re not that complex for anyone with a bit of a math background. While you’re at it you should have the mathematician look at your RNG, because it’s buggy as hell too.

There are easy ways to address the issue if the technical difficulties are to be believed. If there is already a full stack of bleeds convert additional bleeds to direct damage. Even if the damage was 1/2 of what it would be as a stack of bleeding for the full duration, it would still be a massive improvement for groups of condition damage players.

Objects could be handled in exactly the same way. Convert the damage that would of occurred if bleeding was allowed to direct damage. The ratio of the conversion could be easily tweaked.

Aquatic.3408:

There are easy ways to address the issue if the technical difficulties are to be believed. If there is already a full stack of bleeds convert additional bleeds to direct damage. Even if the damage was 1/2 of what it would be as a stack of bleeding for the full duration, it would still be a massive improvement for groups of condition damage players.

Objects could be handled in exactly the same way. Convert the damage that would of occurred if bleeding was allowed to direct damage. The ratio of the conversion could be easily tweaked.

Yes, and yes. Certainly not perfect, but an improvement. For the inanimate objects, I can understand poison, or control effects not having an impact, but fire should, and I consider bleeding to be cuts and scratches, which could easily be converted to damage against inanimate objects in a similar way to what it is now, though it should be scaled down a bit in that direct damage should cause damage faster, especially against inanimate objects.

HardRider.2980:

That age old question

“How to make a wall bleed” … Seriously.. your shocked that objects cannot bleed -.-

and yes no one seems to complain that a wooden dagger is capable of destroying a stone wall in 5 seconds flat… Or that a magic ball of light destroys the same wall… or that kicking the wall in the face destroys it too… or that stabbing a dragon in the foot with toothpicks for 5 minutes kills it and it can’t do anything to stop you…

I mean come on… it’s a video game…

ZudetGambeous.9573:

HardRider.2980:

That age old question

“How to make a wall bleed” … Seriously.. your shocked that objects cannot bleed -.-

and yes no one seems to complain that a wooden dagger is capable of destroying a stone wall in 5 seconds flat… Or that a magic ball of light destroys the same wall… or that kicking the wall in the face destroys it too… or that stabbing a dragon in the foot with toothpicks for 5 minutes kills it and it can’t do anything to stop you…

I mean come on… it’s a video game…

Perfect!

If the devs want to set up scenarios where condition damage is worse or not effective compared to direct damage… that is fine. It is a design decision that is consistent (true when I play solo or in a group). I would hope they also set up scenarios where condition damage was better than direct damage (mobs with ridiculously high armor).

But as I have said before… this is a pipe dream because right now condition damage is useless (in groups of two or more) because it is limited by target.

Ulari

Conditions tend to make players watch UI elements instead of the action. What I find strange is that some people like attrition in PVP. Applying damage over time and running away while you wait until your opponent dies sounds really boring to me.

HardRider.2980:

That age old question

“How to make a wall bleed” … Seriously.. your shocked that objects cannot bleed -.-

No, he is shocked that a significant number of classes and players dependent on a MAJOR damage mechanic that effects a huge number of skills are given no alternative ways to do damage in a regularly occurring scenario with out changing builds in a game that claims you can contribute by “playing the way you want”. You knew that though but since you had nothing worth while to contribute you decided to be a smart kitten instead. If you want there to still be people to play with in 6 months time you better be shocked wood doesn’t bleed. Not to mention their are about a million ways to address the lack of realism… call the conditions splinter, rot, & termites for all i care. It doesn’t matter so long as its balanced. ITS AN MMO, if water not burning causes an imbalance you fix no matter how unrealistic water burning is. If rocks bleeding is an imbalance you fix it no matter how unrealistic because imbalance is the fastest road to game death aside from bugs and MMOS are far from the exception to that rule… more so they are the greatest demonstration of that fact in existence.

Aeonblade.8709:

Servanin.5021:

- World bosses are immune to conditions
- Destructible objects are immune to bleeds
- Bleeds, poison and burn only count from the most recent(Or highest damage?) applicant

So during the early days of GW2, I could have passed this off as an oversight or bug, but a year later its still the same way so its evidently intentional. Why?

I think they are scared to touch conditions until they gather more data. Right now condi builds are near useless in most PvE situations, and way too good in WvW situations.

They need to overhaul the entire condition system, but I wouldn’t expect it any time soon.

Can’t say I agree.

Right now, Condition is only good against players who run no anti condition items (Which are getting more viable, with stuff like “Rune of Anti-Toxin”, “Rune of Melandru”, Sigil of Generosity and others).

On a 1v1 situation, depending on the enemy, maybe. Also depending on the class. But on a Zerg level, and even against groups, unless you run “Dire” runes you’ll pretty much get stomped.