Guild Wars 2

Are dedicated condition builds viable in this meta, at mid-to-high level pvp? Since I’ve been getting very mixed responses. For example in the past meta, most necromancers ran power wells over condi, just because shoutbow+eles made their team immune to condis, so condi necro had 0 pressure during teamfights. Conversely condition builds are very strong in 1v1 and skirmishes, where there is less cross cleanse.

Do you think its any different now? Shoutbow isn’t very useful anymore, but eles and now support guard, and even mantra mesmer all have AoE cleanses for their team that seem to make condition builds just as useless in teamfights as they were before. In ESL lately, I’ve seen 0 condition necros (only nos’ cele build is seen), one condition ranger (genyen who mains it), and one burn guard (sunfish). So I’ve seen 2 condition builds being used in the 3 tournaments I’ve watched since the patch.

Some say that condition builds are only viable when you have a “condi cleave comp” to back it up. Meaning that you need multiple condition builds on a team in order to make it really work, and in my experience in random non-competitive matches, that seems true. This comp is a bad idea because condi dps builds often have poor sustain (for pointholding), except on ranger, and glass builds just do similar damage faster.

Others have told me that condi builds are still very much viable, especially with the stacking and scaling changes, but I am still worried about condi dps builds being crap in teamfights, specifically as a necromancer player.

imo there’s no reason to play conditions in the first place, even more so that they’re not really viable.

like you said, as it currently stands conditions are baseline useless in teamfights (especially so in coordinated teamplay), narrowing them down to 1v1-specific roles, but the thing is there are power builds that usually handle them in 1v1s while also being able to contribute to teamfights.

for example I play crit strikes thief (no shadow arts/condi removal in stealth) and i’ve never had an issue with condition rangers, guards, mesmers, or engies being overpowered. they’re all perfectly beatable in a fair 1v1 through smart use of mild condi cleanse and mitigation like evades and blinds. however the difference between me and the condition player is that while our builds perform about the same in 1v1 situations, mine continues to perform well outside of that environment.

damage over time will never do well in team environments because there’s just way too much time for multiple people to react to it. sorry.

After balance update, Static Engineer build stomped Condi Engi pretty hard.

Kinda sad tho.

Liked my P/P engi.

Completely non-bias and optimistically speaking, pure condi builds like Rabids/Carrion/Settlers will generally have a tougher time – not because they get heavily countered – but because they’re higher risk builds that doesn’t self sustain very well compared to teams with 2 or three bruiser/tanki classes and 2/3 power classes.

The biggest difference between now and prepatch is that burns are stackable to the point that a syncronized burn burst can do 3x more damage than a power build. The catch, it’s 3x more risky as a single cleanses can remove every single damage.

Burn Guards don’t typically have this issue. They’re like an Ele who’s permanently on Fire Attunement. He can get an an average of 5 to 7 burn stacks and offer a burn burst aoe potential of 17 stacks.

People’s mentality are still on the old school meta. They have no idea what certain build variants are capable of nor do they know how to counter said build when they come across it.

If you’re serious about condition build viability, I challenge you to experiment with your own build and see exactly how you can make it work on a competitive team.

burning guardian is the only viable one

Viable? yea kinda. Optimal? Nope!

Play cele ele you’ll barely notice the difference and the short answer is no. With necro I quickly switch to cele over condi it doesn’t have all those weak points points lack of cleave,poor AA,low LF gain etc. I found bunker guards more suitable than burn ones as allies.

It’s pretty ironic since some believe there is a condition meta and the devs believe they improved condition specs in PvP.

Sagat.3285:

It’s pretty ironic since some believe there is a condition meta and the devs believe they improved condition specs in PvP.

They ruined condition specs in sPvP, probably not because conditions are too weak, but because power damage is overbuffed and far superior to conditions.

Ranger dedicated condi is semi-viable to not viable at mid to high tiers. Viable if enemy incorrectly guesses you are power pew pew and specs for that. Inviable if they know you are running conditions up front.

Condi Necro seems to be very strong right now. I only had a chance to play about 100 sPvP matches since the patch and so far, I dont think I’ve had one game where it felt useless.

Saiyan.1704:

Completely non-bias and optimistically speaking, pure condi builds like Rabids/Carrion/Settlers will generally have a tougher time – not because they get heavily countered – but because they’re higher risk builds that doesn’t self sustain very well compared to teams with 2 or three bruiser/tanki classes and 2/3 power classes.

The biggest difference between now and prepatch is that burns are stackable to the point that a syncronized burn burst can do 3x more damage than a power build. The catch, it’s 3x more risky as a single cleanses can remove every single damage.

Burn Guards don’t typically have this issue. They’re like an Ele who’s permanently on Fire Attunement. He can get an an average of 5 to 7 burn stacks and offer a burn burst aoe potential of 17 stacks.

People’s mentality are still on the old school meta. They have no idea what certain build variants are capable of nor do they know how to counter said build when they come across it.

If you’re serious about condition build viability, I challenge you to experiment with your own build and see exactly how you can make it work on a competitive team.

A slightly casual premade my guild had actually faced your premade a couple weeks ago like 3 times in a row. I was playing ele with stop drop and roll and even then the burn was still what killed me the most..

But beyond that, and in general, I’m still struggling to come to a conclusion, I play necromancer a lot, so I was hoping that the terror builds could make a come back with the signets, but because they have 0 burn (dhuumfire sucks with vanilla necro), I’m really afraid it won’t be viable, even with 4 skills/traits that corrupt boons and whatnot, I’m afraid that the passive cleanse against an organized team would be too strong, so celestial necro would just be a safer pick.

Burn guard and healway burn ele are probably the only successful condition classes I’ve seen.

Burn guard is burn guard.

Healway Bunker boon throwing might stacking condition ele is just a pain to deal with, especially if they run water/earth/arcana or fire/earth/water.