Guild Wars 2

Cond builds performer poorly against PvE bosses due to the way condition caps work. Direct damage/person is unaffected by how many people participate in a Champ fight. But condition damage/person drops rapidly as more people join the fight.

Now we hear that Champs will drop better rewards for those who make ‘sufficient’ contribution to the fight.

1. Does this mean condition builds will become even more of a handicap in PvE Champ fights?
2. Will this effectively remove condition builds from PvE?

Cond builds work more effectively in solo play PvE (when facing Champions).

The easiest method for me, as a Mesmer, to kill a champion is to equip a Staff and always have 2 clones between me and said champion. This tactic works for the majority of solo-able champions in the game. I actually do that running full zerk, meaning I have pretty much no damage output, but if I do run it as a Cond Mesmer, it makes it slightly faster (not too much, though, since 6-16k damage warlocks are still good dps even if they always die after 1 attack).

Interesting. Without a player test server we aren’t really go to know until it happens.

I don’t want to derail the thread but it just occurred to me that it might be harder to find help to kill a champ outside of the popular ones if you and a mate have dropped it to 50%, or soloed it, and ask for a bit of help getting all the way for whatever reason.

Dont really see what the worry is since as it is now, doing like 3,000 damage on a PvE boss with 5,000,000 HP earn you gold medal (ie what any build bunker or condi sneeze out by accident).

Condition build are already severely handicapped. Why do people use it in PvE now?

Wow, between the lack of responses and the lack of favorable comments from those that have (thanks btw) it seems like condition builds are already dead in PvE (aside from the occasional solo fanatic).

That’s a shame really, as the lowly role of conditions (and CC) in PvE makes for boring fights:
“Can’t CC the boss. More conditions won’t make a difference. Guess it’s just hit, hit, hit, and dodge any attacks.”

I don’t see an issue aside from the low level ones … maybe and then what about the actual low level characters who are trying to get credit for the fight?

Unless ANet is being stupid about this I wouldn’t really worry. A level 10 champion shouldn’t be giving the same rewards as a lv83 champion. That should shift the number of people at the lower level champions.

Zenguy.6421:

Wow, between the lack of responses and the lack of favorable comments from those that have (thanks btw) it seems like condition builds are already dead in PvE (aside from the occasional solo fanatic).

That’s a shame really, as the lowly role of conditions (and CC) in PvE makes for boring fights:
“Can’t CC the boss. More conditions won’t make a difference. Guess it’s just hit, hit, hit, and dodge any attacks.”

I have no idea what you are cross about, unless comments were deleted already.

Anyway, unless they change how tagging works, condition builds should easily be able to get the champion reward. If you are not able to deal enough damage on a champion to tag him, there must be really something wrong with your setup. It does not take much damage to be eligible for rewards.

Scepter/Dagger + Axe/Dagger combo while traited for it – perfect for 99% of situations.
Champs – Not a prop – S/D – shove the CD’s on .. Ut’s to add more… swap to A/D for dps (conditions first as the axe gets boost with conditions)

You only have to sneeze on a champ to get gold contribution so you could be naked with no traits and wielding a plank and still get the same reward as everyone else.

Condi builds will be just as useless in groups as they are now.

I don’t think champs are going to make it worse, I also think the devs have no intention of putting forth the effort to make it better. But either way, champs are always up long enough to tag, it’s the smaller more common mobs that condi builds constantly get jipped out of.

I guess it depends on how they handle contribution to the killing of the giants. If they work like the current bronze/silver/gold medals contribution to events, I see no problem with it.

I run a conditon build (mesmer), and really have no problem with big boss fights that usually have all conditions capped (specially bleeding, which is the one I use the most), but it’s harder than if I was using my guardian, for example, which can get gold just by autoattacking.

I normally run scepter/pistol – GS (for enviromental enemies inmune to conditions and the AoE of the berzerker phantasm) with rabid gear (prec – though – cond damage), if I have time to prepare for a fight boss fight, I replace the GS for staff and try to get as many phantasmal warlocks out as I can, they do decent damage by themselves, but get 10% extra damage for each condition the target is suffering, and since bosses usually have all conditions on them, means 120% extra damage. If I couldn’t change weapons I just shatter with F1 (AoE damage) as much as I can, even if I’m not specced for it. The scepter autoattack creates new clones so I usually have 3 out before the shatter is out of cooldown.

I dont think it will have a lot of impact.

But we are 11 months into the game…and condition builds being on the bottom end of performance since launch. I dont know why they havent addressed this yet. I prefer condition builds on my thief a lot of the time, but I see bleed caps real quick. So insteda of hitting two more death blossoms, I auto attack, or heart seeker..which hits like a wet noodle if the target has ample HP still.

We’ll see the same influx of people on champs as we saw when the boss events first started giving a guaranteed rare drop 1 per day per toon. At least on the popular champs anyway. Otherwise there will be little impact in my opinion.

Condition builds are already dead in PvE. That won’t affect anything.

That comment means anyone who actually receives loot from the champion, I believe. That said, there’s no reason to use conditions in PvE. Full berserker white damage builds outperform everything else in every class.

I don’t believe the champs will bring any new dynamic to PvE condition builds. Basic tagging and contribution for participation seems to work ok for condition builds. I don’t see why this would change anything. Condition damage is broken in PvE. It needs to be managed by player, as it is in other games, rather than by stacks on a mob.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

You only have to sneeze on a champ to get gold contribution so you could be naked with no traits and wielding a plank and still get the same reward as everyone else.

Literally. I’ve known to come running into a fight about to finish, land a few good hits off my greatsword from maximum range (iZerker, mirror blade, couple spam hits) and get gold credit for the whole 10-20k damage I did in the last 3 seconds of the fight