Guild Wars 2

Greetings people.

As it stands, you already see a lot of negative feedback from both PvE and especially PvE. As a veteran MMO player, I had an idea about what actually went wrong with the condition stacking system.
And the answer is pretty complex: Burning.

- Burning has been made nothing else but 2 times stronger bleeding. And I don’t really see a reason for that. Not from a system point of view. They could have just removed burning and replaced it with bleeds.
- The mechanic is absolutely the same now. But on massively more deadly scale.

What I think would definitely help both PvP and PvE is changing the mechanic a bit backwards to:

• Burning now stacks in duration instead of intensity
• Burning is now applied as a player-exclusive condition and will stack if more players use the same condition without overwriting each other
• Burning damage is buffed accordingly

What will be achieved:

• conditions with obvious mechanics that vary from each other
• reduced condi burst for following reasons: They ignore armor, there are limited ways of countering their damage output and most of condis keep reapplying themselves, they need 1 stat for full effect instead of 3
• conditions will still stay as valid DPS option since the damage output will be noticeable but will not compete with Glass Cannons because of the space for 2 other stats
• PvP reviving will be possible because a single AoE burning field was able to down 3 people who tried to revive the downed guy – and the downed target that kept being bombed for 5K condition damage per second was not even worth stomping at all.
• Players will be rewarded for thoughtful condition cleanse uses instead of braindead spamming on every condition they see

I believe a change of this caliber would make risky Berserkers more valuable for damaging a downed target as well as their possibility to Burst, while Condition specs would still be powerful (AoE) pressure options.

Any feedback appreciated.

If I need to read 10 paragraphs to understand how Burning works then you might as well delete it from the game.

If Burning is too much now you can just tone down the number but not to complicate something that should be simple to understand.

Bleeding is weaker but more accessible (easier to stack) with a longer duration.

Burning is stronger but less accessible with a shorter duration.

They are not the same.

Balanced.

The burning seems to have calmed down anyway.

So basically burn would only stack intensity if it comes from a new player source? I think that might work.

If Anet plans to leave things as-is with tweaks elsewhere, I think the problem is burn-cleaving. Stuff like Engie fire bomb and Warrior LB firefield, Ranger bonfire, Ele firebreath, etc.

Skills applying burn to multiple targets should be a no-no.

Im not even condi based and Im offended by your post Roamzero. Burn-Cleave for everybody, and for all a good burncleave.

The only real problem with burn & poison is

1: PvE mobs and player health totals were not figured in with these being able to stack as they do.

For PvE the simple solution is to increase mob health, while giving mobs more access to condition cleanses and the new resistance boon.

PvP is more complicated but one way to start would be by giving every class some access to the new resistance boon either via weapon or skill.
As is only the warrior & mesmer have any real access to resistance.

I say this ^ because when I was playing on my shout warrior with the healing signet (& shout rune) in pvp I literally had very little problem with conditions.
I could either remove them or ignore them most of the time.

The only time conditions really got to be a problem was when I was fighting multiple people who were specced for them.

If after these changes conditions are still a problem then perhaps they can give PvP a flat condition damage reduction & give bosses some reduction as well.

I actually like the new dynamic PvP system with conditions and high damage. It rewards responsive and swift play. Tanky Support builds are also much more noticeable because glass builds (condi/power) usually lack defenses or utility themselves.
So you sometimes want to get that tanky healer / boon machine down because if you don’t – he will help his aggressors stay alive much better.

But a fact that I was able to bring 3 people into downed state just by throwing Bonfire and Fire Trap alone (Ranger skills) is calling for balance updates. AoE burn-stacking abilities are a problem. Poison not really that much since it’s damage is low and shorter duration for Healing Reduction is a trade-off, but 4K AoE burning from 1 person that stacks from all people is a problem.

Reviving is impossible because of this, Stomping is impossible because of this, and application is too easy. Counter-play is too hard (you can’t avoid all of the damage by cleanses) and the game-play all in all is cheesy.

roamzero.9486:

So basically burn would only stack intensity if it comes from a new player source? I think that might work.

Yes, I thought the same.

Don’t like it. Keep it simple.

Burning isn’t op anyway tbh.

Burning is kinda fine the way it is, maybe it could be toned down just a touch. In general condition builds and dmg pales in comparison to raw dps. You dont really even have much time to stack condis because have you go from 100-0 in seconds.

The problem with burning before the patch was it stacked in duration. It would do ~5x the damage of a bleed and last 30s (elementalist) but get cleansed early in a fight. Now it stacks and the damage seems out of control. They could nerf the dps of burning by reducing the damage and increasing the duration a bit. Still not many classes can stack burns consistently. Elementalist/guardians maybe engineers (have not seen one using flamethrower yet). In pve making burning stack enable it to be relevant now instead of a boss getting perma-burned.

I would make only a slight slight change to burning. At this moment if burning is nerfed to much you will see less warriors, guards ect and way more mesmers and thieves.

I dont think thats balance. They need the burning damage to combat. I don’t play those classes I play necro but I can tell you now I have edited how I feel about burning.

Its not the problem here.

IMO they should simply adjust the damage formula for less dps and longer duration, keeping the total damage the same.

I don’t think it was a good idea to make burning stack with intensity, however that change is now here and will certainly not be reverted. So it has to be balanced as an intensity stacking condition now.

Just adjust the burning coefficient, and make it less strong if you stack max condi power.

To put it simply, each character would only able to maintain one stack of burning by themselves, but multiple sources would still stack.

I think that could work to make burning different to other damage conditions while keeping multiple players working together.

I wonder if that’s even possible with the current code.

I would personally make fire start with relatively little damage, and factor the time you’ve been under burning to increase the damage, so it increases over time the longer it’s on you, making it a condition you REALLY want to remove, as a counter for high vitality characters who can or may even want to keep lots of conditions on themselves.

MithranArkanere.8957:

To put it simply, each character would only able to maintain one stack of burning by themselves, but multiple sources would still stack.

I think that could work to make burning different to other damage conditions while keeping multiple players working together.

I wonder if that’s even possible with the current code.

I would personally make fire start with relatively little damage, and factor the time you’ve been under burning to increase the damage, so it increases over time the longer it’s on you, making it a condition you REALLY want to remove, as a counter for high vitality characters who can or may even want to keep lots of conditions on themselves.

Effectively this would make any build relying on burning for damage unviable right now since they would never stand a chance against the insane burst potential when they are only being able to uphold one stack indivudually.

That being said, they really NEED to tone down both condi damage and burst damage. The game simply cannot be properly balanced when there is a multitude of one-shot builds.

There’s another way, though.

Make conditions be reduced with toughness. Or at least some of them. If it’s burning only or bleeding only – I wouldn’t mind (burning makes more sense, though).

Well I mean yes, of course, why not? If you can burst people with conditions now, why not? The counter-play of cleansing is nerfed because by the time you cleansed the condition you already got burned by 30% of the damage anyways, and it was only applied for 2 seconds.

Vitality would still be there for the win or lose builds, while toughness for those who’d like to focus on healing back up.

As for the Zerk classes – I find them close to fine. Some classes and builds are better, but basically Thief is a suicide bomber. He kills or is killed. And usually both. Mesmers are vulnerable if you avoid their combo, so they are more skill-oriented to play as or against.

Just theory-crafting, though.

Think reducing the duration of burning applying skills would work? Burning would still be a burst condition, but people wouldn’t be able to get 20+ stacks of it without being completely focused on doing so beforehand. (PvP perspective)

i don’t quite agree OP. they are classes that naturally apply way less conditions, and are mostly dependent on burns and bleeding stacks. the thing is if you apply burning again as an duration stacking boon. Burning as whole will get weaker. Making it player based assumes that all players have some kind of condi build that applies burning, then u must also hope that said players had some decent condition damage. I’m all for teamwork, but forcing certain builds to be heavily player dependent is not something i can stand behind at.

Second of all You still have quite a lot of counters to burns, you have resistance, various stances such as endure pain etc, shout heals. Or you can just straight up get focused and cleaved to death. While condition builds are strong on in thier own right. DPS is easily it’s equal overall. most condition based builds can get cc’ed to death. necromancer have a large channeling time, engineers or thiefs are squishy as hell.

Also this is teambased effort so, and considering guardians and ele will rise a lot more in matches. thanx to the burn buff more water and light fields will be dropped to counter the burn conditions.

Burning isn’t that bad, condi builds aren’t as powerful as raw dmg builds atm.

Razor.9872:

Think reducing the duration of burning applying skills would work? Burning would still be a burst condition, but people wouldn’t be able to get 20+ stacks of it without being completely focused on doing so beforehand. (PvP perspective)

I think some people are forgetting ele and guard deserves high damaging burning. I hope the devs don’t forgot that when they gut burning,

i think the only thing that needs scaling down is overall damage output, some burst builds are able to 1 shot spike on their own and overloading with condis basically means game over almost 3 seconds after. Now you can invest in condition damage and have vitality and toughness and still do TONS of damage but for that kind of downing power, a power build has to invest in power, precision and ferocity.

It is simple to deal with physical attacks but maybe resistance needs to be more available. Or maybe just everything needs toning down a little.

I don’t have a problem with insane burns on non-spammy burn builds. Against a physical build, if I stand in front of a zerker warriorr not doing anything, I’ll get hit for 7k, 9k, 8k, dead. Same with dedicated burn builds – if I’m not cleansing, I’ll get hit for 7k, 7k. 7k, dead.

However what I’m NOT cool with is a spammy, hybrid, tanky build melting me with continuous reapplied 3-6 stacks of burns. Yes I’m talking about the cele ele. Engies are totally manageable because they aren’t tanky at all. And shoutbows, they can’t apply as many burns.

So with the current system we gotta make sure the burns aren’t spammable by certain specs. Doing a blanket burn nerf will make condi specs useless. So we need to go through this spec by spec. It’s super important that devs don’t kneejerk this into uselessness, as per usual.