Guild Wars 2

Condition damage is really powerful ATM because it only requires 1 stat to optimize. This makes conditions like burning have very high damage potential with minimal investment. I think this is a huge problem and has lead to op dire roaming builds and things like burn guardian and cele ele having very high lethality while retaining bunker level survival.

Power builds have to sacrifice much more because they need 3 stats instead of just one to optimize their damage (power, ferocity, precision).

Malice

The idea is to introduce malice as a new stat. While condition damage increases the damage of conditions, malice affects how fast they tick. With high amounts of malice and condition damage, it should be possible to create burst condition builds that melt enemies very fast at the cost of survival.

With this new stat in play, condition timers should be adjusted to tick slower with no or lower malice. This means that wearing armor like dire will play more like a true attrition build with higher survival but conditions that take longer to deliver damage.

To supplement the system, power on rampager and sinister gear should be changed to malice. A new gear set called Corrupter’s will grant condi (major), malice, vit as a balanced set.

Rabid and carrion will remain as hybrid sets. Dire will be attrition.

I don’t think I’d agree here.

So with Condition Damage, Condition Duration, Condition Stacking and Malice (+ Might) we’d have 4 (+1) factors affecting your damage output… overcomplicating conditions isn’t the right way to approach this topic.

Making the existing factors more impactful (like anet already did with condi damage scaling) is much more sensible than to slam another stat into the combat system.
Your idea of a modular tickrate could be easily integrated into condition duration, making the condi tickrate in berserker/hybrid builds SLOWER than they are now, but a bit faster in pure condi builds (with adjusted scaling and base values, of course).
Condition duration just needs to be more impactful.

This is literally the last time I’m gonna bother commenting on one of these threads that’s claiming condition builds are “way too strong”, “OP” or what ever other kind of ridiculous dribble people want to spew.

Condition builds are not OP, the stupidity of the average player is. You laugh at someone who cries Thief is OP because it two shot them on their zerk amulet no block, no invuln build the same way you laugh at the person who cries conditions are OP on their no cleanse, no immunity build.

When I go in to a match I consider all possibilities. I don’t bring only blocks for physical damage while not bothering to bring any cleanses. And if I don’t bring one or the other (or some variation of it) I’m sure to be extra careful around that which I am weak to.

Burning Guardians are a bit over the top right now. Far from OP but if they catch you unprepared (in the middle of a fight for example) most times you are toast. If they have their burn stacks adjusted, there will be no condition builds that are anywhere near OP, at least in PvP.

I will die at least 60% of the time to a condition build if I am not a full offensive power build. I will die about 10% of the time if I am. -> When I fight a condition Mesmer on my zerk amulet Warrior they die before they can wear me down. When I fight one on my Soldier amulet Warrior they have enough time to stack conditions and I don’t have enough cleanses to manage them. You know why that’s okay? Because a bunker shouldn’t be able to bunk against everything.

There’s also Vulnerability that now increase the damage of conditions.

And actually there’s a condition damage that grant you the chance to melt your enemy: Burn. It’s a really high (sometimes too much) condition damage.

And classes like engis can output a insane dps why can mix all the actual conditions to deal damage.

if you want to force the condititon damage users to chose more dps builds with condition losing defensive stats, you can do only one thing:
Reduce the condition duration of all existing conditions bu 40% and add the condition duration statistic in an amulets to grant 100% condition duration, giving back the condition duration lost with a little bonus why you chosed a dps build.

That will also affect direct damage builds why influence vulnerability and cripple, but it’s not a big problem for some of them to stack it back.

That’s the only way to reduce the stack of conditions and make condition duration more impactful.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

This is literally the last time I’m gonna bother commenting on one of these threads that’s claiming condition builds are “way too strong”, “OP” or what ever other kind of ridiculous dribble people want to spew.

Condition builds are not OP, the stupidity of the average player is. You laugh at someone who cries Thief is OP because it two shot them on their zerk amulet no block, no invuln build the same way you laugh at the person who cries conditions are OP on their no cleanse, no immunity build.

When I go in to a match I consider all possibilities. I don’t bring only blocks for physical damage while not bothering to bring any cleanses. And if I don’t bring one or the other (or some variation of it) I’m sure to be extra careful around that which I am weak to.

Burning Guardians are a bit over the top right now. Far from OP but if they catch you unprepared (in the middle of a fight for example) most times you are toast. If they have their burn stacks adjusted, there will be no condition builds that are anywhere near OP, at least in PvP.

I will die at least 60% of the time to a condition build if I am not a full offensive power build. I will die about 10% of the time if I am. -> When I fight a condition Mesmer on my zerk amulet Warrior they die before they can wear me down. When I fight one on my Soldier amulet Warrior they have enough time to stack conditions and I don’t have enough cleanses to manage them. You know why that’s okay? Because a bunker shouldn’t be able to bunk against everything.

Can you kitten off with your ridiculous dribble. Hurr condition build dies to a zerker Warrior somehow even though they have 2 working dodges but somehow they don’t on soldier even though if they were that kittened they would have died from the same Hundred Blades on the soldier. There is no way in hell anyone decent dies to a zerker Warrior with a condition build in a 1 vs 1, especially a Mesmer, the king of 1 vs 1.

glaphen.5230:

Can you kitten off with your ridiculous dribble. Hurr condition build dies to a zerker Warrior somehow even though they have 2 working dodges but somehow they don’t on soldier even though if they were that kittened they would have died from the same Hundred Blades on the soldier. There is no way in hell anyone decent dies to a zerker Warrior with a condition build in a 1 vs 1, especially a Mesmer, the king of 1 vs 1.

“Condition builds are not OP, the stupidity of the average player is.” In this case, you.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

glaphen.5230:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

This is literally the last time I’m gonna bother commenting on one of these threads that’s claiming condition builds are “way too strong”, “OP” or what ever other kind of ridiculous dribble people want to spew.

Condition builds are not OP, the stupidity of the average player is. You laugh at someone who cries Thief is OP because it two shot them on their zerk amulet no block, no invuln build the same way you laugh at the person who cries conditions are OP on their no cleanse, no immunity build.

When I go in to a match I consider all possibilities. I don’t bring only blocks for physical damage while not bothering to bring any cleanses. And if I don’t bring one or the other (or some variation of it) I’m sure to be extra careful around that which I am weak to.

Burning Guardians are a bit over the top right now. Far from OP but if they catch you unprepared (in the middle of a fight for example) most times you are toast. If they have their burn stacks adjusted, there will be no condition builds that are anywhere near OP, at least in PvP.

I will die at least 60% of the time to a condition build if I am not a full offensive power build. I will die about 10% of the time if I am. -> When I fight a condition Mesmer on my zerk amulet Warrior they die before they can wear me down. When I fight one on my Soldier amulet Warrior they have enough time to stack conditions and I don’t have enough cleanses to manage them. You know why that’s okay? Because a bunker shouldn’t be able to bunk against everything.

Can you kitten off with your ridiculous dribble. Hurr condition build dies to a zerker Warrior somehow even though they have 2 working dodges but somehow they don’t on soldier even though if they were that kittened they would have died from the same Hundred Blades on the soldier. There is no way in hell anyone decent dies to a zerker Warrior with a condition build in a 1 vs 1, especially a Mesmer, the king of 1 vs 1.

“Condition builds are not OP, the stupidity of the average player is.”

So the stupid Mesmer somehow dies to a class that can only do damage against someone not moving i.e stunned, dies with one of the lowest cooldown semi-stun break in the game on his weapon and a free stun block of the telegraph hammer on the other one with an instant blind stealth on his torch.

I support this idea. Looks great.

I like having condition users split their offenses, but then you’d actually have to develop some sort of active defense. As it stands now, burn guardians (who’re all or nothing) and condition mesmers have the abilities required to actively defend while dropping their conditions. You could also consider condi engi as well, but then you’d need to really look at condition builds and have them do some actual active play as opposed to spamming blocks/invulns/stealths.

Something special for condition mesmer, for instance, is to remove the stealth and give them more ondemand reflects, teleports, and stuns. The reflects and stuns would be short duration, naturally, and the teleports wouldn’t move you far, the reflects would take the projectile and reflect back 100% of the damage + 4-5 stacks of confusion/torment. The stuns would stun a target for a whole 1 second if the mesmer actually interrupts something that isn’t an auto attack and apply 4-5 stacks of confusion/torment. This build would also have no full on stun breaks and only have its teleports to reposition if they’ve been knocked down (like phase retreat), meaning that thieves and hammer warriors would be a hard matchup for them, but they’d still be beatable if played right.

I’m not against a condition build. I’m simply against how passive (for lack of a better term) they feel. As conditions are now, its basically drop the condi bomb > run in circles/stealth/block > hope they don’t cleanse > ??? > profit.

For those of you who remember, tronjeremy had this s/d condi thief build. I’m not sure if it still works after the 6/23 patch, or if it’ll continue to work (assuming it currently works) after HoT, but it was a great example of what a condi build and the general playstyle of a condi user should be in my eyes.

glaphen.5230:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

glaphen.5230:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

This is literally the last time I’m gonna bother commenting on one of these threads that’s claiming condition builds are “way too strong”, “OP” or what ever other kind of ridiculous dribble people want to spew.

Condition builds are not OP, the stupidity of the average player is. You laugh at someone who cries Thief is OP because it two shot them on their zerk amulet no block, no invuln build the same way you laugh at the person who cries conditions are OP on their no cleanse, no immunity build.

When I go in to a match I consider all possibilities. I don’t bring only blocks for physical damage while not bothering to bring any cleanses. And if I don’t bring one or the other (or some variation of it) I’m sure to be extra careful around that which I am weak to.

Burning Guardians are a bit over the top right now. Far from OP but if they catch you unprepared (in the middle of a fight for example) most times you are toast. If they have their burn stacks adjusted, there will be no condition builds that are anywhere near OP, at least in PvP.

I will die at least 60% of the time to a condition build if I am not a full offensive power build. I will die about 10% of the time if I am. -> When I fight a condition Mesmer on my zerk amulet Warrior they die before they can wear me down. When I fight one on my Soldier amulet Warrior they have enough time to stack conditions and I don’t have enough cleanses to manage them. You know why that’s okay? Because a bunker shouldn’t be able to bunk against everything.

Can you kitten off with your ridiculous dribble. Hurr condition build dies to a zerker Warrior somehow even though they have 2 working dodges but somehow they don’t on soldier even though if they were that kittened they would have died from the same Hundred Blades on the soldier. There is no way in hell anyone decent dies to a zerker Warrior with a condition build in a 1 vs 1, especially a Mesmer, the king of 1 vs 1.

“Condition builds are not OP, the stupidity of the average player is.”

So the stupid Mesmer somehow dies to a class that can only do damage against someone not moving i.e stunned, dies with one of the lowest cooldown semi-stun break in the game on his weapon and a free stun block of the telegraph hammer on the other one with an instant blind stealth on his torch.

I honestly have a much harder time against power Mesmers than I do condition… And this isn’t even about Mesmers I was just using them as an example because they are good 1v1’ers.

Don’t go balls deep when you have a dozen stacks of Confusion on you, stay as close to their face as possible to give them trouble with stacking conditions (the same thing you might do with a longbow Ranger) and don’t try to play attrition with them because the longer they’re alive the more of a threat they’re gonna become. As long as you’re pressuring the hell out of them they die easy… Which again brings me to the point that condition builds are not OP. People just really gotta stop trying to outlive these builds by doing a dance around them and trying to cleanse all their conditions. Their bursts have a ramp up, power builds don’t. Get right in their face and go ham, that is the best way to deal with condition builds.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

glaphen.5230:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

glaphen.5230:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

This is literally the last time I’m gonna bother commenting on one of these threads that’s claiming condition builds are “way too strong”, “OP” or what ever other kind of ridiculous dribble people want to spew.

Condition builds are not OP, the stupidity of the average player is. You laugh at someone who cries Thief is OP because it two shot them on their zerk amulet no block, no invuln build the same way you laugh at the person who cries conditions are OP on their no cleanse, no immunity build.

When I go in to a match I consider all possibilities. I don’t bring only blocks for physical damage while not bothering to bring any cleanses. And if I don’t bring one or the other (or some variation of it) I’m sure to be extra careful around that which I am weak to.

Burning Guardians are a bit over the top right now. Far from OP but if they catch you unprepared (in the middle of a fight for example) most times you are toast. If they have their burn stacks adjusted, there will be no condition builds that are anywhere near OP, at least in PvP.

I will die at least 60% of the time to a condition build if I am not a full offensive power build. I will die about 10% of the time if I am. -> When I fight a condition Mesmer on my zerk amulet Warrior they die before they can wear me down. When I fight one on my Soldier amulet Warrior they have enough time to stack conditions and I don’t have enough cleanses to manage them. You know why that’s okay? Because a bunker shouldn’t be able to bunk against everything.

Can you kitten off with your ridiculous dribble. Hurr condition build dies to a zerker Warrior somehow even though they have 2 working dodges but somehow they don’t on soldier even though if they were that kittened they would have died from the same Hundred Blades on the soldier. There is no way in hell anyone decent dies to a zerker Warrior with a condition build in a 1 vs 1, especially a Mesmer, the king of 1 vs 1.

“Condition builds are not OP, the stupidity of the average player is.”

So the stupid Mesmer somehow dies to a class that can only do damage against someone not moving i.e stunned, dies with one of the lowest cooldown semi-stun break in the game on his weapon and a free stun block of the telegraph hammer on the other one with an instant blind stealth on his torch.

I honestly have a much harder time against power Mesmers than I do condition… And this isn’t even about Mesmers I was just using them as an example because they are good 1v1’ers.

Don’t go balls deep when you have a dozen stacks of Confusion on you, stay as close to their face as possible to give them trouble with stacking conditions (the same thing you might do with a longbow Ranger) and don’t try to play attrition with them because the longer they’re alive the more of a threat they’re gonna become. As long as you’re pressuring the hell out of them they die easy… Which again brings me to the point that condition builds are not OP. People just really gotta stop trying to outlive these builds by doing a dance around them and trying to cleanse all their conditions. Their bursts have a ramp up, power builds don’t. Get right in their face and go ham, that is the best way to deal with condition builds.

In a 1 on 1 if they are bad but that works on anything, power builds have less defense so the same strategy works wow. Just hit them till they are dead while dodging everything and hitting them with all your big skills.

We already have two Condition stats: Condition Damage and Duration. You also have supporting stat for nearly every Condition Specialization – Precision, increasing procs or even damage.

Considering we have only one Condition build in PvP meta and that is Burn Guard which abuses absolutely ridiculous Burning coefficients and rest are basically Celestial builds…I don’t know where you come from. WvW solo roaming?

lordhelmos.7623:

Condition damage is really powerful ATM because it only requires 1 stat to optimize. This makes conditions like burning have very high damage potential with minimal investment. I think this is a huge problem and has lead to op dire roaming builds and things like burn guardian and cele ele having very high lethality while retaining bunker level survival.

Power builds have to sacrifice much more because they need 3 stats instead of just one to optimize their damage (power, ferocity, precision).

Malice

The idea is to introduce malice as a new stat. While condition damage increases the damage of conditions, malice affects how fast they tick. With high amounts of malice and condition damage, it should be possible to create burst condition builds that melt enemies very fast at the cost of survival.

With this new stat in play, condition timers should be adjusted to tick slower with no or lower malice. This means that wearing armor like dire will play more like a true attrition build with higher survival but conditions that take longer to deliver damage.

To supplement the system, power on rampager and sinister gear should be changed to malice. A new gear set called Corrupter’s will grant condi (major), malice, vit as a balanced set.

Rabid and carrion will remain as hybrid sets. Dire will be attrition.

I posted a fix elsewhere in the forums, but essentially it was something like this

conditions

Vuln: Unchanged (anti-protection at 25 stacks)
Bleeding: Unchanged.
Burning: Unchanged. (damage reduced by protection. QQ moar noobs)
Poison: Reduces healing done by 25%, down from 33%.
Torment: Reduced base damage by 10%. Increased damage while moving by 33%.
Weakness: Reduces all damage dealt by 15%
Confusion: (pvp) Reduced DoT by 33%. Increased damage after cast by 33%.
Chill: Reduces the effect to 50%, down from 66%.
Slow: Reduced effect to 33%, down from 50%.
Cripple: Reduced effect to 25%, down from 50%.
Immob: unchanged
Blind: unchanged

boons

Protection: 25%, down from 33%. Reduces damage taken from conditions.
Retaliation: Now deals 6% of the damage taken every second back to the target, in addition to previous effects.
Stability: unchanged
Might: Increases all damage by 1%, up to 25%.
Regeneration: Increases healing taken by 25% while affected.
Quickness: Speed reduced to 33%, down from 50%.
Swiftness: Speed reduced to 25%, down from 33%.
Resistance: Applied to more classes (self-application). Duration ALWAYS short.

It isn’t that hard:

1. Reduce the number of auto-procs that make condi bursting a thing.
2. Reduce significantly the application rate of condis. Every single skill doesn’t have to have a condi (or multiple attached). Instead, condis should require deliberate application.
3. Reduce significantly the amount of cleanse available – nobody should be able to full-cleanse easily when loaded up with tons of condis.
4. Re-implement LIFO cleanse rules. RNG cleanse give condi-burst builds with high sustain an overwhelming advantage, as they can just keep trying and eventually RNG will be on their side to wipe away their worthless 1 vuln while those 10 bleeds tick away.

Its just power-creep that has put GW2 in this arms race. It was nice back in the pre-dhuumfire days, when necros had to be smart about building up bleed stacks and covering them and well-timed cleanses were the difference between survival and dying. Now, you either have enough cleanse to make the fight easy, or too little and pretty much auto-lose.

Now I haven’t played this game very long, but I’ve had more than enough experience with PvP theory crafting from other games to realize that Conditions in this game are far from OP and are honestly rather underpowered.

Condis are by nature have double counters, compared to direct damage attacks that are only single counter. What I mean by this is that condi’s can first be countered by the target simply dodging/blocking the attack that applies the condi, but can also be countered by cleanses. Direct damage attacks can only be countered by dodge/block.
Oh, and that’s not even getting into the fact that Necromancers exist.

The other thing with condi is that sPvP is (excluding courtyard) purely objective based, which means that decreasing the time required to wipe the enemy and cap is of the utmost importance. This means that the only condi that are going to be useful are going to be bursty condi. Which is literally burning and burning only.

On the subject of burning, I really don’t get why it’s hated so much. It’s barely more bursty than other direct burst sources, but at the cost of being backloaded. I see people talking about how OP burn guardians are, but is that because burn is too strong, or is it because it’s burn + the rest of the guardian package is too strong?

Don’t add anything new, just nerf them and make them crit. Condition/precision/ferocity stats go.

Scott.7163:

Don’t add anything new, just nerf them and make them crit. Condition/precision/ferocity stats go.

Just a random thought from my programmer’s mind: It may not be possible to make them crit depending on how “stacks intensity” is implemented.

Condi of the same type allways stack regardless of source. Which again depending on how the game engine does stacks begs the question of when you have condi stacks from different players, which player’s precision do you use?

Scott.7163:

Don’t add anything new, just nerf them and make them crit. Condition/precision/ferocity stats go.

Nerf them and make them crit?

Nerf their damage by 50%!

Then give them 100% chance to crit for 50% more damage!

Net = no change.

I don’t understand why people think changing the way stats interact with each other is the way to go. changing the conditions themselves would be easier, or simply removing one or two conditions so you don’t get clouded anymore. I honestly believe that adding Torment to the game is what made conditions OP – too much conditions to remove.

^or they could make condition cleanse prioritize the condition with the most stacks/DPS, kinda like how steal prioritizes stab.

glaphen.5230:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

glaphen.5230:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

This is literally the last time I’m gonna bother commenting on one of these threads that’s claiming condition builds are “way too strong”, “OP” or what ever other kind of ridiculous dribble people want to spew.

Condition builds are not OP, the stupidity of the average player is. You laugh at someone who cries Thief is OP because it two shot them on their zerk amulet no block, no invuln build the same way you laugh at the person who cries conditions are OP on their no cleanse, no immunity build.

When I go in to a match I consider all possibilities. I don’t bring only blocks for physical damage while not bothering to bring any cleanses. And if I don’t bring one or the other (or some variation of it) I’m sure to be extra careful around that which I am weak to.

Burning Guardians are a bit over the top right now. Far from OP but if they catch you unprepared (in the middle of a fight for example) most times you are toast. If they have their burn stacks adjusted, there will be no condition builds that are anywhere near OP, at least in PvP.

I will die at least 60% of the time to a condition build if I am not a full offensive power build. I will die about 10% of the time if I am. -> When I fight a condition Mesmer on my zerk amulet Warrior they die before they can wear me down. When I fight one on my Soldier amulet Warrior they have enough time to stack conditions and I don’t have enough cleanses to manage them. You know why that’s okay? Because a bunker shouldn’t be able to bunk against everything.

Can you kitten off with your ridiculous dribble. Hurr condition build dies to a zerker Warrior somehow even though they have 2 working dodges but somehow they don’t on soldier even though if they were that kittened they would have died from the same Hundred Blades on the soldier. There is no way in hell anyone decent dies to a zerker Warrior with a condition build in a 1 vs 1, especially a Mesmer, the king of 1 vs 1.

“Condition builds are not OP, the stupidity of the average player is.”

So the stupid Mesmer somehow dies to a class that can only do damage against someone not moving i.e stunned, dies with one of the lowest cooldown semi-stun break in the game on his weapon and a free stun block of the telegraph hammer on the other one with an instant blind stealth on his torch.

Not sure why Mesmers were even brought up in this conversation… Mesmer is a 1v1 class by default. Power and Condi builds are both OP on this class in a 1v1 situation. Power is 3x more effective in TPvP than Condi is… on this class.

What separates Mesmers from other Condition built classes is that Condi Mesmers do significantly worse in team vs team skirmish scenarios because of how lacking their AoE conditions are. What’s sad is, even Condi Trap Rangers have more AoE condi applications than Mesmers. Condi Mesmer is basically the prepatch version of Condi Guardian.

Back on Topic
Condi doesn’t work as well in TPvP but it’s OP in Solo PvP. Fix what’s OP about Condi in Solo PvP and it’s fixed.

Lets be realistic here and realize exactly why yall’s suggestions wont work.

• Reducing damage but increasing condition duration? This will only hurt condi builds in tournament play and render them useless because people are already cleansing conditions efficiently.
  Then you have that one random solo team full of guardians/ele/necro (two Sig Necros alone will soft counter any condi team composition) that already counters condition builds. The game is a bit more Rock-Paper-Scissors than you think, sadly.

• Condi can now crit? Wont change a thing… 10 stacks of unique conditions all criting at once = new condi burst meta.

• Buff Thieve’s condition cleansing because every teef i’ve come across thinks conditions are OP? Don’t expect to have 11k health + 7k backstabs without having a weakness.

• Prioritize incredibly high condi stacks I’m leaning towards this idea because it just makes sense. If I have 10 unique single stacks of conditions on me and that single 8 stacks of Torment, why should I cleanse that 1 condi stack just because it luckily proc after some one’s condi burst? GW2 promotes active play. A player who saves his condi cleanses for a condi burst is considered active play.

I understand why condi cleanses is prioritized in this way… but in 3 years, it isn’t exactly common practice strategy for a condi build to cover his condi bursts with a minor condition proc afterwards, of which, is usually a rng stack of blind or bleeds. Maybe for 1v1 fights but definitely not Team vs Team skirmish fights.

It may hurt the high tier pvp condi meta (lel, that 1 condi class… :/ ) but help the casual, minority, players in soloQ.

TL;DR
Conditions (along with power builds) were changed to be a bit more bursty in PvP. Cleansing Conditions should be prioritized to compensate this new bursty playstyle.

Prioritize the conditions with the highest damage coeficient. If that coeficient isn’t there on any condition, the usual First-in cleansing priority would take effect.

Caine.8204:

Scott.7163:

Don’t add anything new, just nerf them and make them crit. Condition/precision/ferocity stats go.

Nerf them and make them crit?

Nerf their damage by 50%!

Then give them 100% chance to crit for 50% more damage!

Net = no change.

There’s actually a big change: you need to commit to condition/precision/ferocity stats to maximize your damage output, i.e. you cannot have damage AND the sustain brought by other stats (toughness, vitality, healing power).

Condition damage is not strong because of the required stats. It is strong, because of people’s ignorance towards the mechanics involving condition damage. This argument comes up again and again and is never conclusive. I am tired of this.

Condition damage does not nearly compete with power damage, because it can be cleansed. If you waste cleanses on low stacks of conditions, then it’s your own mistake. Be clever and manage your cleanses or go crazy on a condition damage counter build. If you believe condition damage is so much stronger than anything else, then expect and counter it and don’t run the same metabattle build over and over again.

Did you ever consider the meta battle build you are using is abysmally weak to conditions?

OP: Condition builds have 2 stats already… damage and duration.

Saiyan.1704:

Not sure why Mesmers were even brought up in this conversation… Mesmer is a 1v1 class by default. Power and Condi builds are both OP on this class in a 1v1 situation. Power is 3x more effective in TPvP than Condi is… on this class.

What separates Mesmers from other Condition built classes is that Condi Mesmers do significantly worse in team vs team skirmish scenarios because of how lacking their AoE conditions are. What’s sad is, even Condi Trap Rangers have more AoE condi applications than Mesmers. Condi Mesmer is basically the prepatch version of Condi Guardian.

Mesmers were brought up because he specifically said his zerker Warrior vs Mesmers.

Archon.6480:

Did you ever consider the meta battle build you are using is abysmally weak to conditions?

OP: Condition builds have 2 stats already… damage and duration.

Oh thanks for telling me, let me just look through the list of amulets with condition duration….Oh it only comes from runes, sigils, food and Giver’s weapons, but only the first half is in PvP and the 2nd half gives more than the first half.

Again. The problem isn’t the number of stats that go into condition damage. To bring this up already highlights the lack of understanding. Condition damage requires less stats (in some cases it only barely does), because it works different than power damage. The biggest issues are: Condition damage works over time and can be cleansed. So after one applied conditions, the “future” damage can be removed. This is different to power damage, which cannot be removed after it was applied.

Does this mean every condition damage build out there is super balanced? No, there are certainly issues in some areas. But don’t pretend it’s due to how condition damage works. The principle is sound.

Unfortunately many players fail to understand how this works. This is why I personally am successful with a mantra inspiration build. As a glass cannon lockdwon Mesmer I support my team with AoE condition cleanses, which turns very often previous lost team fights (I wasn’t around) to wins, because many players prefer going conditions lately and suddenly their damage is reduced to next to nothing.

TyPin.9860:

Again. The problem isn’t the number of stats that go into condition damage. To bring this up already highlights the lack of understanding. Condition damage requires less stats (in some cases it only barely does), because it works different than power damage. The biggest issues are: Condition damage works over time and can be cleansed. So after one applied conditions, the “future” damage can be removed. This is different to power damage, which cannot be removed after it was applied.

The problem with this reasoning is it’s one-sidedness. Sure, once applied power damage cannot be removed, only healed. There are other, additional factors though that mitigate or punish power damage and dont apply to condition damage such as protection, toughness, retaliation, weakness on enemy and a lot of “invulnerability skills” that only prevent direct damage. This is further amplified by the fact that a lot of condition applying attacks are unblockable (e.g. all traps) which also adds aegis, reflections and other block skills to the list.
In addition to that, in some significant cases the number of successful attacks required to apply conditions for X damage is a lot smaller than the number of successful power attacks required for X damage. This already balances the fact that conditions can be cleansed and a relevant part of their damage removed.

I agree that I didn’t take protection, weakness and toughness into account in my post. I will come to this later.

However, I will first address what you said about “invulnerability”. There are 3 instances only granting invulnerability to direct damage, but not conditions: Signet of Stone, “Protect Me!” and Endure Pain. There are but also 2 instances, where you are granted invulnerability to conditions but not direct damage: Diamond Skin and Berserker Stance – with Diamond Skin making you basically immune to purely dedicated condition builds. Though, the broad scale of invulnerability effects, blocks and evades aren’t picky if they prevent direct or condition damage or both.

Amenaza.8346:

This is further amplified by the fact that a lot of condition applying attacks are unblockable (e.g. all traps) which also adds aegis, reflections and other block skills to the list.

This is simply an exaggeration and “cherry” picking. There is a vast list of unblockable skills on weapons and utilities as well as some traits that modify certain skills to be unblockable. This applies to condition damage skills as well as to power skills and other types of skills.

Amenaza.8346:

In addition to that, in some significant cases the number of successful attacks required to apply conditions for X damage is a lot smaller than the number of successful power attacks required for X damage. This already balances the fact that conditions can be cleansed and a relevant part of their damage removed.

Your argument doesn’t make sense. If there is a general principle to condition damage, which is offset by the ability to cleanse, why does it only apply to “some significant” cases? You are actually dead wrong here. I’ll explain the general concept of cleanses further down. There are issues, where I agree that conditions might be too strong. But those issues aren’t connected to the principle of condition damage but to the nature of certain builds or even just single skills/traits.

Now to the involved stats: The nature of all involved stats in direct damage application and prevention and condition damage application and prevention comes down to this: Conditions are designed to bypass armor and work over time. So the only stat against condition damage is vitality. But, for the reason of attrition, condition builds need to have more stats open to survive themselves, to survive the longer lasting fights. This is the principle, which provides a really interesting interaction in GW2 combat. Are there condition damage burst builds? Yes, there are. However, if you have one teammate or you yourself cleanses available, this burst doesn’t help, because you will simply cleanse it and we are back to attrition. In some cases, you can virtually nullify the condition damage permanently, which I haven’t seen possible with direct damage. And I do find this kind of situation completely okay.

For your comment on protection and weakness I will only answer: resistance.

To requote from the sPvP Stat & Rune thread.

Bezagron.7352:

Dire Stats
For me the issues with Dire is not the sustain combat (this is fine) but the ability for condition bursts. Conditions are unique in that for maximum damage for a single stack only require 1 passive stat (Condition Damage) & that they ignore armour. Just these two facts means a direct comparison between Dire & Soldiers is not possible.

If looking at skill bursts Dire applies maximum possible burst condition damage but if your trying to do that with direct damage (White) you would be looking at needing Power, Precision (100% Crit-Chance) & Ferocity.

Dire’s sustain damage is fine it’s how fights should play out with conditions, “The longer it goes the more dangerous the sustain condition player becomes”. Dire’s problem is with the condition stacking change, it now also gives the best condition burst possible while still receiving Vitality & Toughness (Imagine a Burn Guard with Dire).

I fine the idea of condition burst acceptability but not that it only requires a single stat. A solution would be to allow conditions to crit & rebalance them around that. Condition Burst would then require Sinister similar to how Direct (White) requires Berserker. This would turn Dire for conditions into exactly what Soldier’s is for Direct.

If you also want to be able to burst with conditions for me the simple concept idea would be for conditions to now crit. Requiring the same investment as Power builds. I say simple concept because I very much doubt it would be simple to implement. It also would probably greatly increase server load.

Conditions are unique in that they only require 1 stat from maximum damage on a single tick & that they ignore armour. Don’t get me wrong for maximum condition damage players typically still need precision to proc those “On Crit” conditions to provide maximum condition stacks but for a typically burst “On Crit” conditions are a minor consideration. And this is a large balance problem I believe Arenanet have now given themselves with the stacking changes (Which was needed for group play), Burst Condition builds only needing 1 stat.

The problem isn’t the stat requirement. To really understand, if the problem lies in the condition build, one needs to analyze which combo loads which condition. Is the condition formula for the condition not appropriate? Are there too many stacks to easy to apply? Is the frequency of application an issue? What are the usual counter measures?

But before we do this, consider the following:
The lower the PvP “tier”, the more often you see condition damage builds. At least that is what everybody says, I did not see actual evidence of this. I am not 100% sure if that holds true, but it seems to be generally accepted, so I will go with this assumption.
Many players but also check for their builds metabattle.com. Which leads to weird interactions. Builds, that are designed for team coordination and specific roles, are now used by completely random groups, which in the lower tier lack the communication and skill to deal with condition burst. This leads to a huge biased opinion (at least in the forum), where people think conditions are actually so much stronger and when fighting a condition build, they actually go in there with a different mind set, pressuring themselves.

I personally haven’t had the issue to be overwhelmed by a condition build in a few seconds. When I lost, then due to being outnumbered or due to being simply outlasted by the other guy. And this is, how it should work.

The principle is sound. Only certain instances should be looked at. Those, which actually may be problematic.

I like the Malice idea but I think it would work better as a boon.