Guild Wars 2

Eleandra.4859:

The point made by the anti-condi people in this thread is that condi builds can have similar dps as power builds and also that the condi cleanses of most classes (eles are a different kind of beast) are on much higher cooldown than condi applications.

This is rather deceptive, as those damage numbers are assuming no cleansing. Those 8k burn stacks don’t come from a single skill, they had to build up to that point. If you failed to avoid the equivalent attacks from a Soldier’s build, you would also be in dire straits.

Condition builds can kill you, yes. So can Soldier’s builds, with similar efficiency. So why don’t they?

Long and short of it? Because regarding conditions, people don’t bother to learn which attacks to negate. They don’t see a big number up front on these hits under any circumstances, so they never make the association of “this skill=pain.” This subtlety makes them seem vastly stronger than they actually are, as players don’t realize how bad of a situation they are in until they are taking, well, 8k DPS from a single condition. They then blame it on conditions being ridiculous and overpowered when they simply ate hit after hit and it took this long for the full impact of those decisions to be realized.

When you’re dying to massive condition damage per second, you already made your mistakes. What’s going on at this moment isn’t going to help you improve as a player, which makes it much more insidious. Your mistakes were several seconds ago.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Eleandra.4859:

The point made by the anti-condi people in this thread is that condi builds can have similar dps as power builds and also that the condi cleanses of most classes (eles are a different kind of beast) are on much higher cooldown than condi applications.

This is rather deceptive, as those damage numbers are assuming no cleansing. Those 8k burn stacks don’t come from a single skill, they had to build up to that point. If you failed to avoid the equivalent attacks from a Soldier’s build, you would also be in dire straits.

Condition builds can kill you, yes. So can Soldier’s builds, with similar efficiency. So why don’t they?

Long and short of it? Because regarding conditions, people don’t bother to learn which attacks to negate. They don’t see a big number up front on these hits under any circumstances, so they never make the association of “this skill=pain.” This subtlety makes them seem vastly stronger than they actually are, as players don’t realize how bad of a situation they are in until they are taking, well, 8k DPS from a single condition. They then blame it on conditions being ridiculous and overpowered when they simply ate hit after hit and it took this long for the full impact of those decisions to be realized.

When you’re dying to massive condition damage per second, you already made your mistakes. What’s going on at this moment isn’t going to help you improve as a player, which makes it much more insidious. Your mistakes were several seconds ago.

+1

I’ve been reading the forums a long time and its funny to me that when people get what they want they turn around and complain :/ before people wanted viable condi damage builds. We get them and now they say its too strong? So many ways to remove condi in this game its ridiculous. What people should be doing imho is trying to find the mass amounts of builds available to us instead of complaining that the same 3 skills/traits they ALWAYS run don’t do EVERYTHING :/ 5 trait lines people… With a bunch of Amulets/sigils/skills to combine. Not just 3…… We aren’t playing LotR… One ring doesn’t rule them all. There is Rock/Paper/Scissor in this game contrary to popular belief. Its just not hard trinity in the sense that any class can run any role with their own niche.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Eleandra.4859:

The point made by the anti-condi people in this thread is that condi builds can have similar dps as power builds and also that the condi cleanses of most classes (eles are a different kind of beast) are on much higher cooldown than condi applications.

This is rather deceptive, as those damage numbers are assuming no cleansing. Those 8k burn stacks don’t come from a single skill, they had to build up to that point. If you failed to avoid the equivalent attacks from a Soldier’s build, you would also be in dire straits.

Condition builds can kill you, yes. So can Soldier’s builds, with similar efficiency. So why don’t they?

Long and short of it? Because regarding conditions, people don’t bother to learn which attacks to negate. They don’t see a big number up front on these hits under any circumstances, so they never make the association of “this skill=pain.” This subtlety makes them seem vastly stronger than they actually are, as players don’t realize how bad of a situation they are in until they are taking, well, 8k DPS from a single condition. They then blame it on conditions being ridiculous and overpowered when they simply ate hit after hit and it took this long for the full impact of those decisions to be realized.

When you’re dying to massive condition damage per second, you already made your mistakes. What’s going on at this moment isn’t going to help you improve as a player, which makes it much more insidious. Your mistakes were several seconds ago.

Uhh it’s like 5.8k every 10 seconds just from any attack critting on Engineer trait. Purging Flames does 10k just from it being cast on you and every single time someone enters it, If he activates justice with 4 allies around you take like 20k damage if each hit once. Ranger has 2 different fields that do 10k each if you sit in them and each are as big as a point and extremely low cooldowns. Activating Incendiary Ammo and hitting with any 3 hits does 12k damage and you can reset the cooldown if you take Kinetic Battery, off hand pistol .5 second cast does 10k every 15 seconds too, 8k from Fire Bomb every 8 seconds if you sit in it’s field, cast Napalm on a downed guy and you got 14k to him and the people trying to revive. 5k per torch throw on Guardian twice every 10 seconds and 3.5k each just from being around him before each throw.

Also that’s another thing, if you are poisoned and revived, with my 11k health I only revive with like 2.9k, conditions stay on while downed so if you have enough and you can’t even dodge while downed, you will literally get downed again instantly.

Because condition builds require one vital and valuable resource that power builds really don’t: time. Condition builds have to buy time to kill you.

Purging Flames can do 10k if it’s not avoided (which is totally possible). But it does that over a long period of time, meaning it’s easier to out-heal and/or retaliate.

Here’s an easy to explain example from the Power side: which is more dangerous, traited Locust Swarm, or Gravedigger? Gravedigger, right? Why is that? Both skills have the same Power coefficient, and so do the same amount of damage. Meanwhile, Locust Swarm is harder to avoid (a single dodge/block/blind will not cut it), buffs the Necro with Swiftness and Life Force, and debuffs you via Cripple.

So why is Gravedigger considered the more dangerous skill?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Because condition builds require one vital and valuable resource that power builds really don’t: time. Condition builds have to buy time to kill you.

Purging Flames can do 10k if it’s not avoided (which is totally possible). But it does that over a long period of time, meaning it’s easier to out-heal and/or retaliate.

Here’s an easy to explain example from the Power side: which is more dangerous, traited Locust Swarm, or Gravedigger? Gravedigger, right? Why is that? Both skills have the same Power coefficient, and so do the same amount of damage. Meanwhile, Locust Swarm is harder to avoid (a single dodge/block/blind will not cut it), buffs the Necro with Swiftness and Life Force, and debuffs you via Cripple.

So why is Gravedigger considered the more dangerous skill?

Uhh I’m pretty sure Gravedigger does 150% more damage than 10 ticks of that and it’s cooldown resets itself while healing you.

glaphen.5230:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Because condition builds require one vital and valuable resource that power builds really don’t: time. Condition builds have to buy time to kill you.

Purging Flames can do 10k if it’s not avoided (which is totally possible). But it does that over a long period of time, meaning it’s easier to out-heal and/or retaliate.

Here’s an easy to explain example from the Power side: which is more dangerous, traited Locust Swarm, or Gravedigger? Gravedigger, right? Why is that? Both skills have the same Power coefficient, and so do the same amount of damage. Meanwhile, Locust Swarm is harder to avoid (a single dodge/block/blind will not cut it), buffs the Necro with Swiftness and Life Force, and debuffs you via Cripple.

So why is Gravedigger considered the more dangerous skill?

Uhh I’m pretty sure Gravedigger does 150% more damage than 10 ticks of that and it’s cooldown resets itself while healing you.

I did say traited Locust Swarm, which is 15 ticks. Gravedigger doesn’t heal you, either. Cooldown reset is only if you’re hit below 50%, but I can garuntee you try to avoid it above that threshold as well.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

glaphen.5230:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Because condition builds require one vital and valuable resource that power builds really don’t: time. Condition builds have to buy time to kill you.

Purging Flames can do 10k if it’s not avoided (which is totally possible). But it does that over a long period of time, meaning it’s easier to out-heal and/or retaliate.

Here’s an easy to explain example from the Power side: which is more dangerous, traited Locust Swarm, or Gravedigger? Gravedigger, right? Why is that? Both skills have the same Power coefficient, and so do the same amount of damage. Meanwhile, Locust Swarm is harder to avoid (a single dodge/block/blind will not cut it), buffs the Necro with Swiftness and Life Force, and debuffs you via Cripple.

So why is Gravedigger considered the more dangerous skill?

Uhh I’m pretty sure Gravedigger does 150% more damage than 10 ticks of that and it’s cooldown resets itself while healing you.

I did say traited Locust Swarm, which is 15 ticks. Gravedigger doesn’t heal you, either. Cooldown reset is only if you’re hit below 50%, but I can garuntee you try to avoid it above that threshold as well.

Still the only reason it would be considered strong is because it resets its cooldown on 50% or lower and downed not your own health. Does more than Hundred Blades channel casting it 3 times on downed people. Either way testing it with Zerker and Air runes it only did like 6k damage over 15 seconds to light armor dummy, Engineer does that in an instant and doesn’t have to stalk you to do more.

9k hits aren’t “strong?” But 10k burning over 12 seconds is terribly overpowered.

Logic at its finest, people.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

9k hits aren’t “strong?” But 10k burning over 12 seconds is terribly overpowered.

Logic at its finest, people.

6k from standing next to the Necromancer for 15 seconds who gave up 35 damage and healing for his team every hit compared to 6k from being critical hit by any attack every 10 seconds. This is also with Zerker and Air runes, my Engineer comparison is using Rabid with Balth. 1.25 second cast time skill can’t be considered strong to me besides the downed destruction that condition fields can do too.

Condition damage will never be balanced at the rate this game is going because of the warped concept that the devs (and now the deluded playerbase) have been attempting to apply to it. Condition damage (damage-over-time; DoTs) is a pressure mechanic. In a very long history of off and online games, DoTs have fundamentally never functioned as a consistent way of finishing a kill on their own.

DoTs have always been a tool to force unfavorable decisions onto the resources and movement of enemy players. They put sustained, light pressure over a long period of time which is dealt with by the target either using their own skills/resources to remove it or by retreating to a location or a player who can address the DoT. However, not only does GW2 not have a party member that can provide sustained, direct healing (yet, and even then, the “healing output:incoming damage” ratios seen on some of the new specs are still ENTIRELY out of whack to the point where I continue to doubt anet even tests anything regarding the numbers that they put into the game), but a basic condition rotation is often a death sentence even against a target with 50% HP. The only thing stopping this is cooldowns, because of its nature as an mmorpg and also its shallow combat design which foregoes the importance of legitimate positioning and juking along with its lack of any real managed resources.

A solution? As crazy as it sounds: add health packs to the field with a 15 s respawn. The packs could heal various amounts of HP, but most importantly, they would remove conditions from the player who touched and consumed it. The packs can’t be very near to points, but their existence would at least allow DoTs (even after they get rightfully nerfed) to force a predictable movement into an enemy instead of what happens now which effectively boils down to someone popping a hard counter and laughing while still pressing their buttons or a guy without the right buttons running around for 3 seconds as his HP pool boils away under the effects of what is supposed to be a DAMAGE-OVER-TIME mechanic.

tl;dr “Damage over time” does not mean spike; it does not mean burst. DoTs such as GW2 condition damage have a very specific pressure purpose which it has overstepped for no established reason other than the arbitrary whims of some flavor-pushing dev team and a vocal group of the playerbase who just didn’t feel like wearing a certain gear stat triad.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

9k hits aren’t “strong?” But 10k burning over 12 seconds is terribly overpowered.

Logic at its finest, people.

Players can see and dodge Gravedigger. There is no effective way to consistently mitigate the passive triggers, instant ranged skills and autoattack spam which dominates condition play aside from stock up one’s bar and traits on hard counters and then hoping that they buy the player enough time to +forward while pressing buttons until the condition guy dies.

There is nothing skillful about either side of that exchange and it is perpetuated by condition damage being overtuned and improperly implemented on a fundamental level.

Erasmus.1624:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

9k hits aren’t “strong?” But 10k burning over 12 seconds is terribly overpowered.

Logic at its finest, people.

Players can see and dodge Gravedigger. There is no effective way to consistently mitigate the passive triggers, instant ranged skills and autoattack spam which dominates condition play aside from stock up one’s bar and traits on hard counters and then hoping that they buy the player enough time to +forward while pressing buttons until the condition guy dies.

There is nothing skillful about either side of that exchange and it is perpetuated by condition damage being overtuned and improperly implemented on a fundamental level.

10k burning damage would be from a skill (like Purging Flames), not a proc. Totally dodgable.

And you’re right, when you let the condition builds do whatever they want to you, there is no skill on either side. When you treat them exactly as you would Power builds, with heavy-hitting skills you need to avoid, accepting that you will take at least some damage (autos), and keeping your eyes peeled for those heavy-hitters, skill emerges on both sides, with a ton of play and counter-play.

Just because you don’t know what to avoid doesn’t mean something is overpowered. It means you don’t know how to counter it yet.

If a condition build can beat you only from auto-attacking, then you’re bad. Full stop.

glaphen.5230:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

9k hits aren’t “strong?” But 10k burning over 12 seconds is terribly overpowered.

Logic at its finest, people.

6k from standing next to the Necromancer for 15 seconds who gave up 35 damage and healing for his team every hit compared to 6k from being critical hit by any attack every 10 seconds. This is also with Zerker and Air runes, my Engineer comparison is using Rabid with Balth. 1.25 second cast time skill can’t be considered strong to me besides the downed destruction that condition fields can do too.

Why can a 1.25 second cast skill not be considered strong?

Something you’re probably forgetting is that Necro has very easy access to 100% crit chance. Try redoing the same test with Death Perception equipped, use Locust Swarm, and pop into Death Shroud immedietly afterward. You’ll see your 8-9k.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Erasmus.1624:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

9k hits aren’t “strong?” But 10k burning over 12 seconds is terribly overpowered.

Logic at its finest, people.

Players can see and dodge Gravedigger. There is no effective way to consistently mitigate the passive triggers, instant ranged skills and autoattack spam which dominates condition play aside from stock up one’s bar and traits on hard counters and then hoping that they buy the player enough time to +forward while pressing buttons until the condition guy dies.

There is nothing skillful about either side of that exchange and it is perpetuated by condition damage being overtuned and improperly implemented on a fundamental level.

10k burning damage would be from a skill (like Purging Flames), not a proc. Totally dodgable.

And you’re right, when you let the condition builds do whatever they want to you, there is no skill on either side. When you treat them exactly as you would Power builds, with heavy-hitting skills you need to avoid, accepting that you will take at least some damage (autos), and keeping your eyes peeled for those heavy-hitters, skill emerges on both sides, with a ton of play and counter-play.

Just because you don’t know what to avoid doesn’t mean something is overpowered. It means you don’t know how to counter it yet.

If a condition build can beat you only from auto-attacking, then you’re bad. Full stop.

Uhh I already listed a ton of burning skills.

glaphen.5230:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Eleandra.4859:

The point made by the anti-condi people in this thread is that condi builds can have similar dps as power builds and also that the condi cleanses of most classes (eles are a different kind of beast) are on much higher cooldown than condi applications.

This is rather deceptive, as those damage numbers are assuming no cleansing. Those 8k burn stacks don’t come from a single skill, they had to build up to that point. If you failed to avoid the equivalent attacks from a Soldier’s build, you would also be in dire straits.

Condition builds can kill you, yes. So can Soldier’s builds, with similar efficiency. So why don’t they?

Long and short of it? Because regarding conditions, people don’t bother to learn which attacks to negate. They don’t see a big number up front on these hits under any circumstances, so they never make the association of “this skill=pain.” This subtlety makes them seem vastly stronger than they actually are, as players don’t realize how bad of a situation they are in until they are taking, well, 8k DPS from a single condition. They then blame it on conditions being ridiculous and overpowered when they simply ate hit after hit and it took this long for the full impact of those decisions to be realized.

When you’re dying to massive condition damage per second, you already made your mistakes. What’s going on at this moment isn’t going to help you improve as a player, which makes it much more insidious. Your mistakes were several seconds ago.

Uhh it’s like 5.8k every 10 seconds just from any attack critting on Engineer trait. Purging Flames does 10k just from it being cast on you and every single time someone enters it, If he activates justice with 4 allies around you take like 20k damage if each hit once. Ranger has 2 different fields that do 10k each if you sit in them and each are as big as a point and extremely low cooldowns. Activating Incendiary Ammo and hitting with any 3 hits does 12k damage and you can reset the cooldown if you take Kinetic Battery, off hand pistol .5 second cast does 10k every 15 seconds too, 8k from Fire Bomb every 8 seconds if you sit in it’s field, cast Napalm on a downed guy and you got 14k to him and the people trying to revive. 5k per torch throw on Guardian twice every 10 seconds and 3.5k each just from being around him before each throw.

Also that’s another thing, if you are poisoned and revived, with my 11k health I only revive with like 2.9k, conditions stay on while downed so if you have enough and you can’t even dodge while downed, you will literally get downed again instantly.

Not even one of them has above .75 second cast time or any obvious animations. Tell what physical skill does 5k+ damage without an obvious animation besides Backstab and doesn’t involve elites.

glaphen.5230:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Erasmus.1624:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

9k hits aren’t “strong?” But 10k burning over 12 seconds is terribly overpowered.

Logic at its finest, people.

Players can see and dodge Gravedigger. There is no effective way to consistently mitigate the passive triggers, instant ranged skills and autoattack spam which dominates condition play aside from stock up one’s bar and traits on hard counters and then hoping that they buy the player enough time to +forward while pressing buttons until the condition guy dies.

There is nothing skillful about either side of that exchange and it is perpetuated by condition damage being overtuned and improperly implemented on a fundamental level.

10k burning damage would be from a skill (like Purging Flames), not a proc. Totally dodgable.

And you’re right, when you let the condition builds do whatever they want to you, there is no skill on either side. When you treat them exactly as you would Power builds, with heavy-hitting skills you need to avoid, accepting that you will take at least some damage (autos), and keeping your eyes peeled for those heavy-hitters, skill emerges on both sides, with a ton of play and counter-play.

Just because you don’t know what to avoid doesn’t mean something is overpowered. It means you don’t know how to counter it yet.

If a condition build can beat you only from auto-attacking, then you’re bad. Full stop.

Uhh I already listed a ton of burning skills.

glaphen.5230:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Eleandra.4859:

The point made by the anti-condi people in this thread is that condi builds can have similar dps as power builds and also that the condi cleanses of most classes (eles are a different kind of beast) are on much higher cooldown than condi applications.

This is rather deceptive, as those damage numbers are assuming no cleansing. Those 8k burn stacks don’t come from a single skill, they had to build up to that point. If you failed to avoid the equivalent attacks from a Soldier’s build, you would also be in dire straits.

Condition builds can kill you, yes. So can Soldier’s builds, with similar efficiency. So why don’t they?

Long and short of it? Because regarding conditions, people don’t bother to learn which attacks to negate. They don’t see a big number up front on these hits under any circumstances, so they never make the association of “this skill=pain.” This subtlety makes them seem vastly stronger than they actually are, as players don’t realize how bad of a situation they are in until they are taking, well, 8k DPS from a single condition. They then blame it on conditions being ridiculous and overpowered when they simply ate hit after hit and it took this long for the full impact of those decisions to be realized.

When you’re dying to massive condition damage per second, you already made your mistakes. What’s going on at this moment isn’t going to help you improve as a player, which makes it much more insidious. Your mistakes were several seconds ago.

Uhh it’s like 5.8k every 10 seconds just from any attack critting on Engineer trait. Purging Flames does 10k just from it being cast on you and every single time someone enters it, If he activates justice with 4 allies around you take like 20k damage if each hit once. Ranger has 2 different fields that do 10k each if you sit in them and each are as big as a point and extremely low cooldowns. Activating Incendiary Ammo and hitting with any 3 hits does 12k damage and you can reset the cooldown if you take Kinetic Battery, off hand pistol .5 second cast does 10k every 15 seconds too, 8k from Fire Bomb every 8 seconds if you sit in it’s field, cast Napalm on a downed guy and you got 14k to him and the people trying to revive. 5k per torch throw on Guardian twice every 10 seconds and 3.5k each just from being around him before each throw.

Also that’s another thing, if you are poisoned and revived, with my 11k health I only revive with like 2.9k, conditions stay on while downed so if you have enough and you can’t even dodge while downed, you will literally get downed again instantly.

Not even one of them has above .75 second cast time or any obvious animations. Tell what physical skill does 5k+ damage without an obvious animation besides Backstab and doesn’t involve elites.

Lava Font, Fire Grab, Path of Scars, Shield of Wrath, and Overcharged Shot all come to mind, and only Lava Font is arguably an obvious animation. Arcane Wave and Arcane Blast can also hit 5k with appropriate damage mods and Might, and those have no telegraph whatsoever.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

glaphen.5230:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Erasmus.1624:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

9k hits aren’t “strong?” But 10k burning over 12 seconds is terribly overpowered.

Logic at its finest, people.

Players can see and dodge Gravedigger. There is no effective way to consistently mitigate the passive triggers, instant ranged skills and autoattack spam which dominates condition play aside from stock up one’s bar and traits on hard counters and then hoping that they buy the player enough time to +forward while pressing buttons until the condition guy dies.

There is nothing skillful about either side of that exchange and it is perpetuated by condition damage being overtuned and improperly implemented on a fundamental level.

10k burning damage would be from a skill (like Purging Flames), not a proc. Totally dodgable.

And you’re right, when you let the condition builds do whatever they want to you, there is no skill on either side. When you treat them exactly as you would Power builds, with heavy-hitting skills you need to avoid, accepting that you will take at least some damage (autos), and keeping your eyes peeled for those heavy-hitters, skill emerges on both sides, with a ton of play and counter-play.

Just because you don’t know what to avoid doesn’t mean something is overpowered. It means you don’t know how to counter it yet.

If a condition build can beat you only from auto-attacking, then you’re bad. Full stop.

Uhh I already listed a ton of burning skills.

glaphen.5230:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Eleandra.4859:

The point made by the anti-condi people in this thread is that condi builds can have similar dps as power builds and also that the condi cleanses of most classes (eles are a different kind of beast) are on much higher cooldown than condi applications.

This is rather deceptive, as those damage numbers are assuming no cleansing. Those 8k burn stacks don’t come from a single skill, they had to build up to that point. If you failed to avoid the equivalent attacks from a Soldier’s build, you would also be in dire straits.

Condition builds can kill you, yes. So can Soldier’s builds, with similar efficiency. So why don’t they?

Long and short of it? Because regarding conditions, people don’t bother to learn which attacks to negate. They don’t see a big number up front on these hits under any circumstances, so they never make the association of “this skill=pain.” This subtlety makes them seem vastly stronger than they actually are, as players don’t realize how bad of a situation they are in until they are taking, well, 8k DPS from a single condition. They then blame it on conditions being ridiculous and overpowered when they simply ate hit after hit and it took this long for the full impact of those decisions to be realized.

When you’re dying to massive condition damage per second, you already made your mistakes. What’s going on at this moment isn’t going to help you improve as a player, which makes it much more insidious. Your mistakes were several seconds ago.

Uhh it’s like 5.8k every 10 seconds just from any attack critting on Engineer trait. Purging Flames does 10k just from it being cast on you and every single time someone enters it, If he activates justice with 4 allies around you take like 20k damage if each hit once. Ranger has 2 different fields that do 10k each if you sit in them and each are as big as a point and extremely low cooldowns. Activating Incendiary Ammo and hitting with any 3 hits does 12k damage and you can reset the cooldown if you take Kinetic Battery, off hand pistol .5 second cast does 10k every 15 seconds too, 8k from Fire Bomb every 8 seconds if you sit in it’s field, cast Napalm on a downed guy and you got 14k to him and the people trying to revive. 5k per torch throw on Guardian twice every 10 seconds and 3.5k each just from being around him before each throw.

Also that’s another thing, if you are poisoned and revived, with my 11k health I only revive with like 2.9k, conditions stay on while downed so if you have enough and you can’t even dodge while downed, you will literally get downed again instantly.

Not even one of them has above .75 second cast time or any obvious animations. Tell what physical skill does 5k+ damage without an obvious animation besides Backstab and doesn’t involve elites.

Lava Font, Fire Grab, Path of Scars, Shield of Wrath, and Overcharged Shot all come to mind, and only Lava Font is arguably an obvious animation. Arcane Wave and Arcane Blast can also hit 5k with appropriate damage mods and Might, and those have no telegraph whatsoever.

Lava Font is a field obviously same as the multiple fire fields that have longer duration and a Marauder Elementalist dies instantly with a staff, Fire Grab has an obvious fire hands circle motion in front of him and has a 40 second cooldown, Path of Scars is a projectile that barely does anything unless it hits twice, Shield of Wrath does nothing if you hit him 3 times and Overcharged does not do 5k. Probably anything can do 5k if you stack might, but those conditions are completely might less.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Eleandra.4859:

The point made by the anti-condi people in this thread is that condi builds can have similar dps as power builds and also that the condi cleanses of most classes (eles are a different kind of beast) are on much higher cooldown than condi applications.

This is rather deceptive, as those damage numbers are assuming no cleansing. Those 8k burn stacks don’t come from a single skill, they had to build up to that point. If you failed to avoid the equivalent attacks from a Soldier’s build, you would also be in dire straits.

Condition builds can kill you, yes. So can Soldier’s builds, with similar efficiency. So why don’t they?

Long and short of it? Because regarding conditions, people don’t bother to learn which attacks to negate. They don’t see a big number up front on these hits under any circumstances, so they never make the association of “this skill=pain.” This subtlety makes them seem vastly stronger than they actually are, as players don’t realize how bad of a situation they are in until they are taking, well, 8k DPS from a single condition. They then blame it on conditions being ridiculous and overpowered when they simply ate hit after hit and it took this long for the full impact of those decisions to be realized.

When you’re dying to massive condition damage per second, you already made your mistakes. What’s going on at this moment isn’t going to help you improve as a player, which makes it much more insidious. Your mistakes were several seconds ago.

the sad truth is those 8k damage are just the burning damage ignoring the bleeding poison and confusion stacks i slap with it

basically what do is bombard my target with poison confusion torment 2 stacks of 4s bleeding and then when they blow their cleanse or in the case of necro they do condi transfer then i unload my 10-14 stacks of burn and all of this stacks i apply with just 3 keys F#, #2 and #4

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lava Font, Fire Grab, Path of Scars, Shield of Wrath, and Overcharged Shot all come to mind, and only Lava Font is arguably an obvious animation. Arcane Wave and Arcane Blast can also hit 5k with appropriate damage mods and Might, and those have no telegraph whatsoever.

Let’s be honest here:
Guild Wars 2 is pretty poorly implemented and horrifically balanced. The only damage that matters is instant. It’s not fair, and it doesn’t foster a high skill ceiling. Gameplay (since actions are either instant or outside the realm of CC due to stability, invulnerability or speed of cast) is balanced by cooldowns instead of timing, positioning (because once a player is in range of another player, things are going to hit unless one of the two combatants wants to just sit out of line of sight and then nothing gets done—which means its back to waiting for cooldowns again) or gamesense.

The problem with conditions, though, is that they epitomize this nature of poor design. Direct damage at least needs to be maintained (regardless of how easy it is to maintain it) while DoTs are fire and forget. To have a fire and forget mechanic often exceed direct damage effectiveness in PvP means that the game doesn’t really take itself seriously.

The whole system needs to sort of be gutted, but the playerbase is too rabid at this point. People get super salty if you question their skill levels or builds because CLEARLY, Guild Wars 2 is an esport that has a high skill ceiling. I have to get mad at the assumption of the contrary because anet says so(?); because some streamer says so(?).

If there’s such a controversy regarding “fairness” or “skill” in a game’s PvP mode, maybe there is something critically awry in the PvP mode itself? People like to argue that conditions or damage are all balanced with esoteric and niche reasoning, but given that the questions to the contrary still linger even 3 years after the game has released, are they really? Is anything honestly balanced or well implemented when the questioning is so rampant?

Why do people use vampirism rune (which is terrible against condis) more often than hoelbrak or melandru, if conditions are a bigger threat than direct dmg?

eh, just play in premades with shout bunkers

Erasmus.1624:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lava Font, Fire Grab, Path of Scars, Shield of Wrath, and Overcharged Shot all come to mind, and only Lava Font is arguably an obvious animation. Arcane Wave and Arcane Blast can also hit 5k with appropriate damage mods and Might, and those have no telegraph whatsoever.

Let’s be honest here:
Guild Wars 2 is pretty poorly implemented and horrifically balanced. The only damage that matters is instant. It’s not fair, and it doesn’t foster a high skill ceiling. Gameplay (since actions are either instant or outside the realm of CC due to stability, invulnerability or speed of cast) is balanced by cooldowns instead of timing, positioning (because once a player is in range of another player, things are going to hit unless one of the two combatants wants to just sit out of line of sight and then nothing gets done—which means its back to waiting for cooldowns again) or gamesense.

The problem with conditions, though, is that they epitomize this nature of poor design. Direct damage at least needs to be maintained (regardless of how easy it is to maintain it) while DoTs are fire and forget. To have a fire and forget mechanic often exceed direct damage effectiveness in PvP means that the game doesn’t really take itself seriously.

The whole system needs to sort of be gutted, but the playerbase is too rabid at this point. People get super salty if you question their skill levels or builds because CLEARLY, Guild Wars 2 is an esport that has a high skill ceiling. I have to get mad at the assumption of the contrary because anet says so(?); because some streamer says so(?).

If there’s such a controversy regarding “fairness” or “skill” in a game’s PvP mode, maybe there is something critically awry in the PvP mode itself? People like to argue that conditions or damage are all balanced with esoteric and niche reasoning, but given that the questions to the contrary still linger even 3 years after the game has released, are they really? Is anything honestly balanced or well implemented when the questioning is so rampant?

People use the same 3 skills same 3 traits same 1 rune and same 3 amulets and complain that it doesn’t do it all and on top of that talk about balance….. People don’t explore builds. People don’t understand the amulet or trait system thats why they have “dumbed” it down so many times. Number one reason for imbalance in GW2…. Sadly…. The player base :/ Not trying to insult anyone just my personal observation. And since in the highest competitive level of the game rotation is king its hard to break the mold because the team who out rotates the other team can have a worse team comp but still win because they dictate the game better.

don’t want to troll but… condi builds are around but not THAT and mainily are guardians and engis because they can spike burning, otherwise they are far from viable given all the clenses. Really I do not see this issue AT ALL.

One of the reasons why condition damage is OP is because it ignores retaliation. I suggest retaliation treats condition damage the same way as direct damage. Every tick from a damaging condition will proc retaliation.

Bleed, confusion, torment, burning, and poison. Potential 1500 damage per sec back to the caster.

Seems like people’s main problem with conditions are primarily just burning being so easy to apply and spike, am I right? Because poison and bleeding do less than half of what burning does. Torment does about half. Oh and confusion, which I’ve seen pretty much 50% to 0% a thief. Maybe I should tune perplex runes on my necro for roaming…hm….intriguing

Man… It’s really sad to see how much of the player base agrees that conditions are “OP.” I’m glad that only a fraction of the players in the game use the forums because I’d hate to see how many more might agree.

The ones that are smart know that conditions don’t need to be nerfed. Drarnor gets it but he’s also apparently too stubborn to realize arguing with you guys is fruitless.

Power damage is like a gun to the head, condition damage is like cancer. You get shot in the head and it’s game over. You get diagnosed with cancer and you go through the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining and depression but you skip the acceptance and instead go back to anger.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Man… It’s really sad to see how much of the player base agrees that conditions are “OP.” I’m glad that only a fraction of the players in the game use the forums because I’d hate to see how many more might agree.

The ones that are smart know that conditions don’t need to be nerfed. Drarnor gets it but he’s also apparently too stubborn to realize arguing with you guys is fruitless.

Power damage is like a gun to the head, condition damage is like cancer. You get shot in the head and it’s game over. You get diagnosed with cancer and you go through the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining and depression but you skip the acceptance and instead go back to anger.

Good thing you can dodge bullets in this game.

glaphen.5230:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Man… It’s really sad to see how much of the player base agrees that conditions are “OP.” I’m glad that only a fraction of the players in the game use the forums because I’d hate to see how many more might agree.

The ones that are smart know that conditions don’t need to be nerfed. Drarnor gets it but he’s also apparently too stubborn to realize arguing with you guys is fruitless.

Power damage is like a gun to the head, condition damage is like cancer. You get shot in the head and it’s game over. You get diagnosed with cancer and you go through the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining and depression but you skip the acceptance and instead go back to anger.

Good thing you can dodge bullets in this game.

Especially Headshot... QQ
And just that the “Burn-cancer” goes from “Recognize” —> “death” :P

I remember years ago I was getting irritated by conditions, so I went and started looking up numbers. I’d make builds in online editors that specialized in condi damage, then I took a look at the skills to analyze how much damage they did.

After I did this process, I 180’d my opinion and realized conditions weren’t actually that bad. It’s just as others have already mentioned: by the time the condis are really piling up, you’ve made your mistakes and are reaping what you’ve sown.

Maybe the way certain abilities apply Burning could use a change. Then again, maybe people need to bring more cleanse, need to use it at better times, and need to figure out when to dodge condi application.

I’m just going to say it. The biggest Anti-Condi players here are Thieves :/
The runner up to Thieves are Engi’s.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Why do people use vampirism rune (which is terrible against condis) more often than hoelbrak or melandru, if conditions are a bigger threat than direct dmg?

Because that’s the meta in Tournament games, not the yolo unranked/ranked games everyone else (90% being Thieves) are refering to.

I’m just going to say it. The biggest Anti-Anti-Conditions players here are condition builds :/ The runner up to condition builds are shout bunkers/Necromancers.

glaphen.5230:

I’m just going to say it. The biggest Anti-Anti-Conditions players here are condition builds :/ The runner up to condition builds are shout bunkers/Necromancers.

Hardly, as others have mentioned the system isn’t implementing condition/dot game play well. Condition pressure doesn’t scale well past 3v3 against the amount of cross cleanse available.

If anything the dot and cleansing game play are in need of a rework.

is anyone complaining about condis who doesn’t play thief?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Grenades can be reflected before impact just fine.

Tell that to my Magnetic Aura, because it does not reflect it.

This just in, Guilds Wars 2 is a game aimed at casual players.

More news at 9.

Alekt.5803:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Grenades can be reflected before impact just fine.

Tell that to my Magnetic Aura, because it does not reflect it.

That is your fault.

Grenades, as well as mortar are a slow arcing angle. Simply because you have an active reflect doesn’t mean anything. If your not putting your reflect into the path of the grenades before the impact the terrain, that is your fault. Do not expect thing to be so passive in this case, because that will not work for you. You are required to move in a manner that reflects the grenades/mortar before they impact the ground near your feet. If you expect your reflect to just bounce them back with poor positioning, may I remind you that they only have to be close, like the old saying goes.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Alekt.5803:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Grenades can be reflected before impact just fine.

Tell that to my Magnetic Aura, because it does not reflect it.

That is your fault.

Grenades, as well as mortar are a slow arcing angle. Simply because you have an active reflect doesn’t mean anything. If your not putting your reflect into the path of the grenades before the impact the terrain, that is your fault. Do not expect thing to be so passive in this case, because that will not work for you. You are required to move in a manner that reflects the grenades/mortar before they impact the ground near your feet. If you expect your reflect to just bounce them back with poor positioning, may I remind you that they only have to be close, like the old saying goes.

I would have argued about aesthetics – Grenades explodes on impact – rather than a l2p issue :P

dancingmonkey.4902:

Alekt.5803:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Grenades can be reflected before impact just fine.

Tell that to my Magnetic Aura, because it does not reflect it.

That is your fault.

Grenades, as well as mortar are a slow arcing angle. Simply because you have an active reflect doesn’t mean anything. If your not putting your reflect into the path of the grenades before the impact the terrain, that is your fault. Do not expect thing to be so passive in this case, because that will not work for you. You are required to move in a manner that reflects the grenades/mortar before they impact the ground near your feet. If you expect your reflect to just bounce them back with poor positioning, may I remind you that they only have to be close, like the old saying goes.

This is one of the most kittened post I’ve seen, let’s just have him move his Magnetic Aura to the ground in front of him. If walls even reflect grenades any good then the only one that works is Mesmers Feedback, others would be mainly useless since you can throw them in front of it and still hit the other side, would only be good if you are running or happen to have a ranged DPS ally far behind it. Let’s just ignore that they ignore the majority of reflect and are nearly useless on all but one.

glaphen.5230:

dancingmonkey.4902:

Alekt.5803:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Grenades can be reflected before impact just fine.

Tell that to my Magnetic Aura, because it does not reflect it.

That is your fault.

Grenades, as well as mortar are a slow arcing angle. Simply because you have an active reflect doesn’t mean anything. If your not putting your reflect into the path of the grenades before the impact the terrain, that is your fault. Do not expect thing to be so passive in this case, because that will not work for you. You are required to move in a manner that reflects the grenades/mortar before they impact the ground near your feet. If you expect your reflect to just bounce them back with poor positioning, may I remind you that they only have to be close, like the old saying goes.

This is one of the most kittened post I’ve seen, let’s just have him move his Magnetic Aura to the ground in front of him. If walls even reflect grenades any good then the only one that works is Mesmers Feedback, others would be mainly useless since you can throw them in front of it and still hit the other side, would only be good if you are running or happen to have a ranged DPS ally far behind it. Let’s just ignore that they ignore the majority of reflect and are nearly useless on all but one.

If he moved further into the path of the grenades, that is, closer to the engineer, the grenades would bounce back.

Wall of Reflection is also incredibly easy to use to reflect grenades. So are Experimental Turrets. Better believe that the Bulwark Gyro toolbelt will be as well.

Other reflects can work, but you need to move closer and into the path of the grenades. Whirling Axe is the easiest of the personal reflects to use due to it’s larger radius, but any can work.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

glaphen.5230:

dancingmonkey.4902:

Alekt.5803:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Grenades can be reflected before impact just fine.

Tell that to my Magnetic Aura, because it does not reflect it.

That is your fault.

Grenades, as well as mortar are a slow arcing angle. Simply because you have an active reflect doesn’t mean anything. If your not putting your reflect into the path of the grenades before the impact the terrain, that is your fault. Do not expect thing to be so passive in this case, because that will not work for you. You are required to move in a manner that reflects the grenades/mortar before they impact the ground near your feet. If you expect your reflect to just bounce them back with poor positioning, may I remind you that they only have to be close, like the old saying goes.

This is one of the most kittened post I’ve seen, let’s just have him move his Magnetic Aura to the ground in front of him. If walls even reflect grenades any good then the only one that works is Mesmers Feedback, others would be mainly useless since you can throw them in front of it and still hit the other side, would only be good if you are running or happen to have a ranged DPS ally far behind it. Let’s just ignore that they ignore the majority of reflect and are nearly useless on all but one.

If he moved further into the path of the grenades, that is, closer to the engineer, the grenades would bounce back.

Wall of Reflection is also incredibly easy to use to reflect grenades. So are Experimental Turrets. Better believe that the Bulwark Gyro toolbelt will be as well.

Other reflects can work, but you need to move closer and into the path of the grenades. Whirling Axe is the easiest of the personal reflects to use due to it’s larger radius, but any can work.

Grenades with the trait have a massive AoE and flight speed, you don’t even need to be in the circle to hit with them. Bulwark Gyro will not reflect it, it has 180 AoE range centered around Engineer, I supposed that would actually work if you do walk into them though but not if the Engineer is close. Wall of Reflection is extremely thin and not that wide, it’s merely moving over to the side slightly, grenades don’t need to go straight like projectiles. If you mean Whirling Defense it has 150 reflect AoE while grenades have 180 AoE and you can’t move. Advanced Turrets is another side step issue and they can’t move either.

Umm, Wall of Reflection has a 900 cast range. You don’t need to be anywhere close to it.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Umm, Wall of Reflection has a 900 cast range. You don’t need to be anywhere close to it.

Cast it anywhere near him and he can walk through it, cast it on top of you he can just aim right in front of the wall, cast it in the middle he can walk slightly to the side, only place it would work is in an extremely thin passage but I don’t know of many, especially near points.

Lots of ways for it to work. Wall of Reflection is rather wide. Cast it, say, 300 units in front of you and you’ve negated him, since the angle he has to go on is so wide compared to the angle you can move on.

Condition builds, especially burn guardians, are as easy if not easier to counter as Power builds. It just takes a bit of knowledge regarding the big hits. Knowledge that many players lack because they don’t make the association between “hand wave” and “pain.” Instead, they associate “hand wave” with “laughable damage” and “massive condition stacks” with “pain”, although the “massive condition stacks” came from a number of “hand waves.”

Everyone complains about the massive condition stacks without actually thinking about where they came from. Hint: it was from all those hits you took.

And yes, glaphen, you are 100% guilty of this exact train of thought. Big condition hits have their tells. You not only have ways to deal with them before they hit, but you also have cleansing to help you with after. Contrary to popular belief, cleansing is not the primary defense against conditions. Dodges/blocks/blinds are.

Can conditions hit hard if they run their full course? Sure, but this is necessary to kill things with them. That time works against them, though, giving more opportunities for them to be cleansed and more opportunity for their assault to be healed through. You can’t usually heal to survive a Power burst. You can heal to survive a condition burst. And the same thing happens with bursters of both types: they’re out of cooldowns and need to find a way to survive until they’re up again. Condition builds are actually averaging a bit higher on the burst cooldowns than Power builds, FYI. Guardians are a bit of an exception since they basically use the same skills for both build types.

And finally: you will take damage. No matter your defense and cleansing, you will take some damage. You can survive this if you’re smart. Not blowing your cleanses when you see the first two burn ticks is a great place to start.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lots of ways for it to work. Wall of Reflection is rather wide. Cast it, say, 300 units in front of you and you’ve negated him, since the angle he has to go on is so wide compared to the angle you can move on.

Condition builds, especially burn guardians, are as easy if not easier to counter as Power builds. It just takes a bit of knowledge regarding the big hits. Knowledge that many players lack because they don’t make the association between “hand wave” and “pain.” Instead, they associate “hand wave” with “laughable damage” and “massive condition stacks” with “pain”, although the “massive condition stacks” came from a number of “hand waves.”

Everyone complains about the massive condition stacks without actually thinking about where they came from. Hint: it was from all those hits you took.

And yes, glaphen, you are 100% guilty of this exact train of thought. Big condition hits have their tells. You not only have ways to deal with them before they hit, but you also have cleansing to help you with after. Contrary to popular belief, cleansing is not the primary defense against conditions. Dodges/blocks/blinds are.

Can conditions hit hard if they run their full course? Sure, but this is necessary to kill things with them. That time works against them, though, giving more opportunities for them to be cleansed and more opportunity for their assault to be healed through. You can’t usually heal to survive a Power burst. You can heal to survive a condition burst. And the same thing happens with bursters of both types: they’re out of cooldowns and need to find a way to survive until they’re up again. Condition builds are actually averaging a bit higher on the burst cooldowns than Power builds, FYI. Guardians are a bit of an exception since they basically use the same skills for both build types.

And finally: you will take damage. No matter your defense and cleansing, you will take some damage. You can survive this if you’re smart. Not blowing your cleanses when you see the first two burn ticks is a great place to start.

No see that’s the problem condition build don’t require knowledge they require utilities and traits to counter, physical builds require knowledge to counter. Grenades are ground targeted so you don’t need to go that far to the side to aim them in a way that their 180 AoE will hit. All those instant hits you took from pretty much anything you mean right? Physical builds you need to only watch for big key hits, conditions you die from practically everything. Physical builds may have lower cooldowns but they have far more ways to counter those big hits, conditions are only countered by cleanses that need to apply constantly. You have many ways to not take damage constantly from physical, conditions can only stop damage from condition removal if it even removes all of it.

That’s my point, those big condition hits? Not instant In fact, large stacks cannot come from instant effects. And if it’s not a big stack? You’re looking at a few hundred DPS from it. If you’re dying to less than 1k DPS, you’re a terrible PvP’er. Is the total amount high? It can be, but the actual DPS isn’t much. This is why people are more concerned with avoiding Maul over Locust Swarm, even though Locust Swarm actually does more total damage (not counting multipliers like Moment of Clarity or Opening Strike).

There are literally three things in the game that work on direct damage, but not conditions: Toughness, Protection, Weakness. Likewise, there are two things that apply to conditions, but not Power damage: cleansing and Resistance. Everything else can protect you equally well from both.

Clearly, you don’t want to listen. This isn’t a case of you just not knowing, it is being blatantly explained to you and you are still ignoring it.

Enjoy being stuck in low leagues.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

That’s my point, those big condition hits? Not instant In fact, large stacks cannot come from instant effects. And if it’s not a big stack? You’re looking at a few hundred DPS from it. If you’re dying to less than 1k DPS, you’re a terrible PvP’er. Is the total amount high? It can be, but the actual DPS isn’t much. This is why people are more concerned with avoiding Maul over Locust Swarm, even though Locust Swarm actually does more total damage (not counting multipliers like Moment of Clarity or Opening Strike).

There are literally three things in the game that work on direct damage, but not conditions: Toughness, Protection, Weakness. Likewise, there are two things that apply to conditions, but not Power damage: cleansing and Resistance. Everything else can protect you equally well from both.

Clearly, you don’t want to listen. This isn’t a case of you just not knowing, it is being blatantly explained to you and you are still ignoring it.

Enjoy being stuck in low leagues.

Name one kittening condition skill with over 1 second cast time besides channels, hell name one with 1. I win most of my games as usual, skill>build.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

That’s my point, those big condition hits? Not instant In fact, large stacks cannot come from instant effects. And if it’s not a big stack? You’re looking at a few hundred DPS from it. If you’re dying to less than 1k DPS, you’re a terrible PvP’er. Is the total amount high? It can be, but the actual DPS isn’t much. This is why people are more concerned with avoiding Maul over Locust Swarm, even though Locust Swarm actually does more total damage (not counting multipliers like Moment of Clarity or Opening Strike).

There are literally three things in the game that work on direct damage, but not conditions: Toughness, Protection, Weakness. Likewise, there are two things that apply to conditions, but not Power damage: cleansing and Resistance. Everything else can protect you equally well from both.

Clearly, you don’t want to listen. This isn’t a case of you just not knowing, it is being blatantly explained to you and you are still ignoring it.

Enjoy being stuck in low leagues.

So endure pain, stone heart, signet of stone, and similar abilities can equally protect me against conditions? And retal? Awesome. Totally going to use those vs condi build now.

glaphen.5230:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

That’s my point, those big condition hits? Not instant In fact, large stacks cannot come from instant effects. And if it’s not a big stack? You’re looking at a few hundred DPS from it. If you’re dying to less than 1k DPS, you’re a terrible PvP’er. Is the total amount high? It can be, but the actual DPS isn’t much. This is why people are more concerned with avoiding Maul over Locust Swarm, even though Locust Swarm actually does more total damage (not counting multipliers like Moment of Clarity or Opening Strike).

There are literally three things in the game that work on direct damage, but not conditions: Toughness, Protection, Weakness. Likewise, there are two things that apply to conditions, but not Power damage: cleansing and Resistance. Everything else can protect you equally well from both.

Clearly, you don’t want to listen. This isn’t a case of you just not knowing, it is being blatantly explained to you and you are still ignoring it.

Enjoy being stuck in low leagues.

Name one kittening condition skill with over 1 second cast time besides channels, hell name one with 1. I win most of my games as usual, skill>build.

Spinal Shivers.

choovanski.5462:

is anyone complaining about condis who doesn’t play thief?

Zoso.8279:

Erasmus.1624:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lava Font, Fire Grab, Path of Scars, Shield of Wrath, and Overcharged Shot all come to mind, and only Lava Font is arguably an obvious animation. Arcane Wave and Arcane Blast can also hit 5k with appropriate damage mods and Might, and those have no telegraph whatsoever.

Let’s be honest here:
Guild Wars 2 is pretty poorly implemented and horrifically balanced. The only damage that matters is instant. It’s not fair, and it doesn’t foster a high skill ceiling. Gameplay (since actions are either instant or outside the realm of CC due to stability, invulnerability or speed of cast) is balanced by cooldowns instead of timing, positioning (because once a player is in range of another player, things are going to hit unless one of the two combatants wants to just sit out of line of sight and then nothing gets done—which means its back to waiting for cooldowns again) or gamesense.

The problem with conditions, though, is that they epitomize this nature of poor design. Direct damage at least needs to be maintained (regardless of how easy it is to maintain it) while DoTs are fire and forget. To have a fire and forget mechanic often exceed direct damage effectiveness in PvP means that the game doesn’t really take itself seriously.

The whole system needs to sort of be gutted, but the playerbase is too rabid at this point. People get super salty if you question their skill levels or builds because CLEARLY, Guild Wars 2 is an esport that has a high skill ceiling. I have to get mad at the assumption of the contrary because anet says so(?); because some streamer says so(?).

If there’s such a controversy regarding “fairness” or “skill” in a game’s PvP mode, maybe there is something critically awry in the PvP mode itself? People like to argue that conditions or damage are all balanced with esoteric and niche reasoning, but given that the questions to the contrary still linger even 3 years after the game has released, are they really? Is anything honestly balanced or well implemented when the questioning is so rampant?

People use the same 3 skills same 3 traits same 1 rune and same 3 amulets and complain that it doesn’t do it all and on top of that talk about balance….. People don’t explore builds. People don’t understand the amulet or trait system thats why they have “dumbed” it down so many times. Number one reason for imbalance in GW2…. Sadly…. The player base :/ Not trying to insult anyone just my personal observation. And since in the highest competitive level of the game rotation is king its hard to break the mold because the team who out rotates the other team can have a worse team comp but still win because they dictate the game better.

This is true. I’d say most of the playerbase plays what Metabuilder tells them to play. When actual decent players start to make builds to counter these builds that 95% of the player base use, apparently thats not fair and needs to be addressed.

Gabriell.4856:

glaphen.5230:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

That’s my point, those big condition hits? Not instant In fact, large stacks cannot come from instant effects. And if it’s not a big stack? You’re looking at a few hundred DPS from it. If you’re dying to less than 1k DPS, you’re a terrible PvP’er. Is the total amount high? It can be, but the actual DPS isn’t much. This is why people are more concerned with avoiding Maul over Locust Swarm, even though Locust Swarm actually does more total damage (not counting multipliers like Moment of Clarity or Opening Strike).

There are literally three things in the game that work on direct damage, but not conditions: Toughness, Protection, Weakness. Likewise, there are two things that apply to conditions, but not Power damage: cleansing and Resistance. Everything else can protect you equally well from both.

Clearly, you don’t want to listen. This isn’t a case of you just not knowing, it is being blatantly explained to you and you are still ignoring it.

Enjoy being stuck in low leagues.

Name one kittening condition skill with over 1 second cast time besides channels, hell name one with 1. I win most of my games as usual, skill>build.

Spinal Shivers.

Well maybe with that reaper trait it could be a damaging condition but that only real one is Epidemic at 1 second, which is probably the most dangerous skill in the game. Only others is one staff Elementalist skill but that makes a really dumb condition weapon and main hand scepter basic attacks with fire and earth that are probably the worst basic attacks in the game and their only conditions.

Gabriell.4856:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

That’s my point, those big condition hits? Not instant In fact, large stacks cannot come from instant effects. And if it’s not a big stack? You’re looking at a few hundred DPS from it. If you’re dying to less than 1k DPS, you’re a terrible PvP’er. Is the total amount high? It can be, but the actual DPS isn’t much. This is why people are more concerned with avoiding Maul over Locust Swarm, even though Locust Swarm actually does more total damage (not counting multipliers like Moment of Clarity or Opening Strike).

There are literally three things in the game that work on direct damage, but not conditions: Toughness, Protection, Weakness. Likewise, there are two things that apply to conditions, but not Power damage: cleansing and Resistance. Everything else can protect you equally well from both.

Clearly, you don’t want to listen. This isn’t a case of you just not knowing, it is being blatantly explained to you and you are still ignoring it.

Enjoy being stuck in low leagues.

So endure pain, stone heart, signet of stone, and similar abilities can equally protect me against conditions? And retal? Awesome. Totally going to use those vs condi build now.

Retaliation doesn’t protect you from anything, it just punishes those hitting you. Which, by the way, yes, that applies just as well to condition builds as Power.

You’re right, I did forget specific skills like Berserker Stance and Purging Flames or traits like Unholy Fervor and Diamond Skin.

Oh wait, looks like it’s balancing out again.