Guild Wars 2

So I was just pondering aspects of the game and I was thinking, isn’t melee supposed to be better damage/scaling than long ranged abilities? So then I got to thinking, that’s pretty often true enough, except what about conditions? As far as I can tell a good majority of the better condition weapons like Necro Staff/Scepter, Warrior Longbow(kinda) Mesmers with staff+Scepter, they seem to avoid this penalty because conditions have set-in-stone scaling. Does anyone else feel this way? Like conditions sort of ignore the penalty of being ranged since the conditions still scale the same regardless of weapon type. And I wouldn’t say in most cases that melee weapons are all that much better at applying condies than ranged…

Any input/insight? I’m not trying to cry here, this is a legitimate concern/thought. Looking for some insight.

I was about to say how the Warrior gets really long bleeds on the auto chain and can trait them crazy long….but then I remembered that the bleed on the Longbow is better than any of the Sword ones.

I really think there are some answers to this crazy AOE condi meta already in the game though…people are just so used to ignoring these things already thakittens not being used. CC Warriors, especially with the addition of Berserker Stance now…are insanely effective at completely shutting down the AOE condi spammers – who are primarily Necros and Engis. Both lacking reliable stability outside of popping an ult.

And another post censored just because I used “that” followed by “its”. And they think I’m trying to talk about a female’s chest. lol DRIVES ME INSANE!

Velron.3729:

And another post censored just because I used “that” followed by “its”. And they think I’m trying to talk about a female’s chest. lol DRIVES ME INSANE!

Yeah, this was mostly just a concern of Ranged versus Melee in their “design”, I guess I just don’t agree with the dps they can do while in range while a zerker war has to be up in the mess of things.

Side note: you can’t say an ownership version of staff with an s without the ’ because if you say something like staff’s without the apostrophe you get: “Stakitten number 5 ability” because it reads it as f’f’s

ronpierce.2760:

Velron.3729:

And another post censored just because I used “that” followed by “its”. And they think I’m trying to talk about a female’s chest. lol DRIVES ME INSANE!

Yeah, this was mostly just a concern of Ranged versus Melee in their “design”, I guess I just don’t agree with the dps they can do while in range while a zerker war has to be up in the mess of things.

Side note: you can’t say an ownership version of staff with an s without the ’ because if you say something like staff’s without the apostrophe you get: “Stakitten number 5 ability” because it reads it as f’f’s

I see your point with conditions…in Power builds we already see this. The only ranged profession that can maybe burst from afar up there semi close to what melee can do is the SD Engineer. And really even then – most of his rifle abilities are in almost melee range to land.

But when it comes to condis it’s not the same at all.

And another lol @ the crazy censorship on this forum. It makes me sad, I’m so against pretending like there are magic words that can’t be heard.

Well, the thing is, condi damage can be stopped FAR more easily than direct damage. When you get crit for 3k, that damage just goes straight through. You need to preemptively prevent direct damage, either through high defenses, protection, or blindness.

While these defenses don’t necessarily work against conditions, conditions need more time to create their effect (not much time if stacked quickly, but still more than “instant”), and can be stopped by simply condition removal, which is quite a relatively available commodity, and those classes where it is lacking, simply need to learn that their build is weak against conditions, and learn when to engage, with whom to group up, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, the fact that you can make a character that is both uber tanky AND have respectable damage via condi’s is pretty crazy, and condi damage could stand to maybe be reduced a little, it is still utterly inconsequential when sufficiently countered.

A few things that I would like to comment on.

Melee is potentially very devastating and is highly damaging. However melee in general relies on CC and yourself not to be CC’ed. Sometimes there is just too many AoE condition spams, blinds and blocks going on. Couple that with mesmer clones, necro minions, ranger spirits/pets, etc, AoE melee attacks will often not hit the person you want to and single target CC will more often then not hit these "NPCs". Melee sometimes is just too unreliable and hit or miss.

On my warrior sometimes I feel like in order to survive in melee and actually do something I need to have Balanced Stance, Berserker’s Stance and Endure Pain all at the same time.

Conditions on the other hand tend to be very reliable in damage dealing, controlling opponents, forcing cooldowns and allowing easier setup for other damaging skills. In many cases, this can be done from a relatively safe distance. And in many cases it is AoE.

Being a power-based melee class means you have to take an active/aggressive approach to fighting. If you aren’t staying on top of the opponent constantly and applying pressure, you are most likely going to die. You need to be relentless. And as we all know this isn’t the easiest thing to do.

With many condition builds, you can afford to take a more passive approach because even when you are not attacking, conditions are still taking its toll on the opponent, and you are still doing damage, allowing you some breathing room to cast healing and utility skills or waiting for cooldowns.

Arguably, the only things you need for a condition build to be somewhat potent is having an inherent way to generate at least 2 damaging conditions pretty well and condition damage. Which is pretty much every class except the Guardian. And then proceed to build condition damage.

Condition duration is really only a bonus as not all too necessary because many condition applying skills last long as it is and there are traits to boost it as well as going down a certain trait line. Precision is also a bonus for proccing certain effects but again it isn’t a necessity.

With a power focused build, for the most part if either your Power, Precision and Crit dmg is lacking, your build will lack potency unless you have other reliable methods of dealing damage. Thats 3 stats to the 1 for Condition Builds. For many classes, ranged power builds are simply not very viable so they often go melee. Unless you have a ton of sustainability, evades and ways to mitigate damage, you also need to build toughness and vitality to survive in melee.

The lack of investment in stats in a condition build allows that class to build for survivability rather easily and is one of the reasons for their popularity amongst certain classes.

In 1v1 fights it isn’t really an issue, but in 5v5s you best pack an ungodly amount of condition removal, classes who can tone down AoE by using their summons. And yes, it is all about how reliable your damage output is and whether you can get it off consistently.

You see hammer/mace+shield burst builds popular for warrior in WvW roaming and 1v1s, but it is easy to see the weakness of such a build in a large scale PvP.