Guild Wars 2

There is a huge balance disaster looming over the horizon, and that is the prevalence of condition damage builds.

What is the problem with them?

There are extremely few viable condition damage builds compared to power based builds due to burning being the most important damaging condition.

Moreover, the few builds mean that only a few professions can actually utilize it well.

As a result, any content that requires condition damage is class locked.

For example, it was mentioned in a stream a while back that it was planned to have monsters in Fractals scale their toughness with level. This would naturally cause more direct damage builds to fall out of favor for condition builds.

But when the only really viable condition builds are from engineers, rangers, and guardians, with engineers far, far surpassing the other two, you go from a direct OR condition damage meta to a condition damage ONLY meta- and since condi engi outstrips anything else available at the moment, it shifts to a condi engi only meta (with support slots for other professions). That is much worse than what currently exists- where you can go condi or direct damage.

Condition damage has 1 passive defense- HP.
Direct damage has 2 passive defensese- Armor, and HP.

Yet for some reason it’s balanced so that conditions do more damage despite having fewer passive defenses.

You could argue that enemies could cleanse conditions, or utilize the new boon, resistance. But very few do, while there are many examples of enemies with high armor that conditions are much superior for.

Now you could say “Oh, but Anet can always balance it out. Give classes more condition damage options, boost other classes to be stronger.”

But that still leaves the problem that it’s (what’s currently) a double stat meta being shifted for a single stat meta. Except what’s being shifted to is much less developed.

Please reconsider toughness scaling and direct damage immune mechanics in instanced PvE. Please put more emphasis on diversifying condition damage options. And please remember not to neglect direct damage options as well. Conditions need to be addressed sooner than later.

tl;dr: too few viable condition builds/classes + condi good at everything = even narrower PvE meta than currently exists.

I’m not sure where you got the idea that condition do MORE dps, because they currently do LESS DPS. the only reason that sinister engineer is top is because it is a hybrid build.

Additionally conditions have 3 defenses not 1, HP, Cleanses, and resistance. Almost every boss in the game cleanses conditions at some point in the fight rendering large chunks to damage wasted. there are far more bosses that cleanse conditions than have high toughness.

I do however agree with your conclusion. Burning is just stupid OP and bleed/torment/confusion are really weak.

Ironically the devs had it right originally. Burn was weaker and bleed was stronger (by about 20% each) and it would have been great. Then mysteriously on patch day burn became crazy strong and bleed was nerfed to hell, being completely different from the preview they showed us.

I feel like a burn guardian was in charge of implementing the patch and he decided to just randomly change the numbers because he was mad or something.

Fixing these back to where they were supposed to be would open up a lot more condition specs, especially for bleed heavy classes like thief, ranger and necro. Which coincidentally are the 3 classes with the lowest condition dps. And the 3 classes that seem to be the least wanted for raids.

thiefs are also pretty good condition dmgers, this SS was taken on my HoT beta daredevil on a elite spider, and note i didnt even had food buff, the couple of times i managed to do raid i got the dmg ticks up to 6k but unfortunally couldnt take a screenshot of the chat screen that time, the daredevil trait line brought a pretty nice upgrade on condition and survability to the evasion condi thief build

and btw, lol, axe/torch rangers are amazing bleed and burn stackers too

What are all these bosses that cleanse or are immune to condis other than Subject Alpha and Mai Trin?

Also, with the downfall of Ice bow burst (totally needed, and a good change), the time between condi build up > physical burst is much earlier now.

It’s also fact that condi builds are more sustained damage. That’s very clear and obvious, even when not using sinister- i.e. using rabid. For example, condi ranger and guard are stronger based purely on conditions.

Ltomato.8649:

What are all these bosses that cleanse or are immune to condis other than Subject Alpha and Mai Trin?

Also, with the downfall of Ice bow burst (totally needed, and a good change), the time between condi build up > physical burst is much earlier now.

It’s also fact that condi builds are more sustained damage. That’s very clear and obvious, even when not using sinister- i.e. using rabid. For example, condi ranger and guard are stronger based purely on conditions.

Pretty much all of them purge conditions at some point in a fight. You probably don’t notice because they are reapplied quickly and usually don’t have an animation on them. It took me nearly a year of playing a condition spec to realize how prevalent it was.

Teq cleanses all conditions at each 25% phase, Husk in SW cleanses all conditions when he jumps, Vale Guardian cleanses all conditions when he splits. All that damage is lost, and most bosses do it. I think it has to do with the devs making things get the immune tag, even for brief instances during attack animations, phase changes, or glitches. As soon as it enters that state all conditions are instantly removed, even if it is so brief that you don’t even see the icon.

Teq is kind of not on the map and immune to all damage after each phase. Vale Guardian splits into different parts. Saying that that reduces condi damage doesn’t makes sense. It makes all effective damage 0. Condi or direct. That doesn’t make sense to say that it’s a condition cleanse. They literally go invulnerable to all damage.

And no. Most bosses in instanced PvE don’t cleanse conditions currently. I’d notice if all the vuln was gone for example. Or in certain bosses, if immobilize or cripple was removed. Just because when I play I don’t usually like to play condition builds doesn’t mean I don’t pay attention to their bars.

Like, I’ll go through the bosses.

AC- none of the bosses cleanse conditions.
CM- none of the bosses cleanse conditions- some projectile destruction, some invuln to all, some retaliation.
SE- no condi cleanses. Some invuln, but that’s to all damage.
TA- no condi cleanses.
CoF- Nope. Although the end structure in P2 isn’t affected by condis i think?
CoE- Subject Alpha cleanses condis.
Arah- Nope. Lupicus becomes immune to all damage when he phase changes.

Fractals- Mai Trin is immune to condis until 5 stacks of shield or lower.

Can you name a specific instanced PvE boss that cleanses condis that isn’t just a phase change where they become immune to ALL damage?

That’s still getting away from the main point though. Even if all classes had viable sinister builds, it would just end up being a sinister meta where toughness becomes an irrelevant stat.