Guild Wars 2

Hello all,

I am proposing some changes to SPvP to promote more balanced game play, increase the importance of team fights, and reduce the effectiveness of condition builds 1v1.

Promoting Balanced Gameplay:

As an effort to promote balanced gameplay, fights need to last a base amount of time longer. As it is, glass burst builds (except Mesmers), have a hard time having a place in SPvP. The amount of damage you gain from a Berserker’s Amulet vs Marauder’s Amulet is negligible. In addition, many support roles aren’t taken, except for when equipping a Celestial Amulet. The idea is to reduce the effectiveness of conditions, change the effectiveness of boons to be “opposites” of the conditions, change the effectiveness of Toughness vs. Conditions, and increase the amount of healing effectiveness while reducing base healing.

*Proposal *

Stat Changes
Toughness: Now reduces damage taken by conditions by 4-16% based on Toughness.
Healing: Reduced base healing by about 25%. Healing #6 Skill buffed about 25%. Healing scales about 25% better across the board.

Condition Changes:

As it stands, conditions influence fights in SPVP more than any other game mode. Conditions, applied to large groups of enemies, can trivialize fights in SPvP and make the condition-heavy team win a great deal of time. Slow, immob, and chill are powerful conditions with, sometimes, very long durations. Slow in itself can have a Chronomancer surviving a 1v2, especially with Time Warp.

Slow: Reduce effect to 33%, down from 50%.
Chill: Reduce effect to 50%, down from 66%.
Cripple: Reduces movement speed by 33%, down from 50%.
Burning: Unchanged
Bleed: Unchanged
Poison: Reduce healing taken by 25%, down from 33%.
Weakness: Reduces all damage done by 15%. (condition and power) (15 anti-might)
Blind: Reduce duration by 25%. Stacks intensity rather than duration. (multiple blinds) (thief buff) (5 stack maximum)
Torment: Damage increased by about 10%.
Confusion: Damage over time increased about 10%.
Immobilize: Unchanged

Boon Changes
Protection: Reduces damage taken by 25%, down from 33%.
Regeneration: Increases healing taken by allies by 25%, in addition to previous effects. Counters Poison.
Might: Increases all damage done by 1% per stack, up to 25%.
Swiftness: Increases speed by 25%, down from 33%.
Fury: Unchanged
Quickness: Effect changed to 33%, down from 50%.
Resistance: add to more professions, self-application
NEW BOON Freedom: Movement impairing effects (Immob, Chill, Cripple) no longer affect you for the duration. Given on abilities that grant Swiftness.
Stability: Unchanged
Retaliation: New Effect Critical hits will reflect an additional 50% damage to the attacker.
———
Condition Removal
Condition removal is in a powerful place. However, as far as support goes, condition removal is often trumped by condition application. Resistance in particular is a rare boon, and one of the strongest. While I agree with the short duration of Resistance, I don’t necessarily agree with the lack of Resistance in-game. Resistance should be made available to the boon support specializations, but with a short duration to counter the very strong effects of the boon.

Support Range
Many of the support abilities have a base range of around 300-600. Other MMOs have healing ranges that are greater than DPS ranges, whereas GW2 stays relatively constant around 300-600 depending on the skill. Support/Healing ranges should be increased to about 600-900, whereas DPS AoE skills should remain around the 300-600 range. This would increase the viability of support roles in a game that is based around a soft trinity rather than simply DPS.

I have edited this to apply some changes from the feedback below. Please continue with your feedback and I’ll update the meta with what everyone thinks.

Conditions existing is fine. The issue with the celestial builds isn’t that conditions as a whole are too strong. The issue (which is mostly gone, by the way) is that the base condition damage is too high relative to what building for condis supplies. Your changes seem directly pulled from a dislike of conditions. Anything remotely similar to this would change the game to a much less diverse meta and would be awful for the game.

Would it not be better to change conditions such that a condition damage build has to invest as heavily in offensive stats as a berserker?

This means:

• Create three different stats affecting conditions positively like e.g. Conditioin damage, ticks/second, condition duration (these are just examples)
• Change conditions such that they are really weak if these three offensive stats are not taken (probably stronger than direct damage with a pure defensive amulet because most classes have more condi cleanse than heal)
• Create a set of amulets just like for power based builds that give the player an option how offensive or defensive he wants to build his character.

This would remove the extreme tankiness of many confition speccs and force the m to consider the same balance as power builds between survivability and damage output.

Du to the fact that condi cleanse is easier to do than heal (but offset by the fact that most classes have to spcifically trait/build for condi cleanse – not for healing) condis should be a little bit stronger than direct damage if e. g.g a soldiers amulet is being used or something similar like dire.

You realize slow and quickness are already 50%, not 66% (still need changed though IMO, they way outshine other boons and conditions). Also cripple is 50%, not 33%.

Anyways, regardless of the mistakes. What they really should do is reduce the durations on conditions and boons and make condition damage and healing increase their respective durations at a 40:1% ratio. At 1200 healing, boons last 30% longer. It offsets the stat changes a bit and gives more purpose for actually needing those stats.

The problem is you can get by with too much without needing much investment when it comes to burn, boons and active defenses. That’s why you see celestial power houses, or unusually tanky Marauders, etc.

That said, boons and conditions could use a balancing pass and general updates.

ronpierce.2760:

At 1200 healing, boobs last 30% longer.

Anyway, conditions need overall buffs, not nerfs. They just need to require investment from the build to reach those new highs.

Burning: unchanged? What?

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

ronpierce.2760:

At 1200 healing, boobs last 30% longer.

Anyway, conditions need overall buffs, not nerfs. They just need to require investment from the build to reach those new highs.

The quote made me LOL harder than it should have…

On topic; I agree with this. Conditions should be life threatening IF their build focuses on bolstering conditions. Period.

Healing power coefficients need an adjustment across the board. Base healing skills should have high base healing but lower coefficients and other healing skills and regen should have lower base healing and really high Healing power coefficients. Similar to condition damage focused builds and conditions; healing power needs to be more impactful on a build that uses it more specifically and effectively.

hahaha. The conditions needing buffed commented made me lol as well. Maybe we can bring back the turret engi at the same time.

Toughness is already the best defensive stat by far, doesn’t need any buffs.

Similarly, most of the debilitating conditions and boons are fine, with the possible exception of quickness and slow. Every damaging condition except burning needs a 10% buff or more. They don’t deal near enough damage to be worth it, which is why you don’t see many condition builds in the game that focus on confusion, torment, poison or bleed.

Also, condition application is completely overshadowed by condition removal contrary to what you say. The only place conditions are effective is in a 3vs3 or less. Anything more than that and aoe condi clear makes conditions irrelevant. Resistance is extremely strong, and I think anet wants it to be a self application boon because it would be way too strong if applied regularly in aoe.

This isn’t another MMO this is GW2. Saying other MMOs do xyz is no justification at all for a change, and is in fact justification for not making that change because Anet wants this game to function differently from other MMOs. Support roles already exist in this game, they don’t need more buffs. People are tanky enough as is without more aoe healing and boon application.

He was laughing at my quote of Sikari’s typo, not the comment on conditions. Condition builds aren’t like turret engineer in that they encourage passive play. Look at the meta. There’s not a single pure condition build that’s run consistently at top tier. It’s all cele. If you nerf the base condi damage but make it stronger with more invested in it (condi damage and the like), then you make those cele builds weaker while promoting condi builds with more counterplay. If they have to invest in it to get good condi damage and pressure, then they’re easier to kill. Obviously if a build becomes strong as a result that is too mindless, you’d nerf it. Conditions aren’t inherently bad, though. They bring more build diversity and dimensions to an otherwise linear game. This is coming from someone who hates to run condition builds.

Demented Yak.6105:

Burning: unchanged? What?

Did you read the post? Conditions in general would be taking a 4%-16% hit based on the target’s toughness. Burning would remain unchanged but its damage would still be reduced. In addition, weakness would be changed to reduce condition damage dealt as well.

This does not come from a hatred of conditions. I ran a Condition Reaper during the beta, and i have over 2,000 games played with Necromancer and another thousand with Mesmer.

Each time the condition meta comes around, it shuts down builds completely in the hands of a good player who understands the mechanic – the more conditions I spam, the less you can do about it. You can try to escape but if you don’t remove all the poison, burning, bleed you currently have on, you’re dead. In addition, if you don’t remove the chill, cripple, immob, I can just reapply my conditions.

Maybe the only change that “would” be needed is a change to toughness to include conditions, and a change to healing to make it more important. Maybe an increase in player’s base amount of vitality in Spvp.

Why would we need unilateral nerf to conditions when condition-centered builds aren’t even viable? I don’t understand the logic here.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

Why would we need unilateral nerf to conditions when condition-centered builds aren’t even viable? I don’t understand the logic here.

solo que noobs ofc

Condition builds are only viable in 1v1s, where they generally perform quite well, except against necromancers of course.

In team fights, their damage is easily negated by D/D eles doing their normal rotation, as well as shout guards, shout warriors (soon to be shout tempest/reaper and druid too as well in some circles), inspiration memser, engineer heal turret, etc.

When you’re worrying about one persons cleanses, its fine and balanced and even powerful. But when you have to worry about the AoE cleanse that a good amount of the “meta” builds bring in a teamight in addition to your target’s cleanses, it ceases to be effective. The only exception is burn guardian, but only because burning does so much burst damage that you can sneak in a huge stack of burns and get a payoff from it before its cleansed 4 seconds later… with a stack of 10 bleeds, you’d need a drastically longer time to get the same payoff as an equivalent stack of burn. Even then, teamfight comps with extra heavy duty cleanse (ie. radioactive’s staff ele+double shoutguard) will negate burn guardian even further.