Guild Wars 2

I just get this feeling when playing pretty much any role in PvP; conditions are freely applied and just as freely removed, which makes it seem pointless to have them in the game in the first place. This also applies to boons, though since I haven’t played a Guardian yet, I expect my experience with a boon-focused class is limited.

I feel like crippling someone, or stacking up a bleed, or hitting them with poison, or whatever should actually mean something, not just “oh, it’ll be removed in a second or two, anyway.” But at the same time, getting that cripple or bleed or whatever should also require effort on my part – I really don’t like the fact that so many conditions are just casually applied as what amount to autoattacks, or skills with very brief cooldowns.

Hell, I’m part of the problem; I tend to primarily play a support-focused warhorn warrior. I’ve got two horn skills, each with a short cooldown (and no resource cost, since GW2 doesn’t use a resource system), and each skill converts one condition into a boon every time it’s used, and that’s on top of what they already do, and not even considering the condition reduction/removal pretty much every class has already.

I just feel it’s dumb when PvP honestly just feels like it’s about mashing buttons rather than managing conditions, boons, and playing intelligently. Maybe I don’t play at a high enough level… but how does ArenaNet expect to get players hooked on their game (in the PvP/esports sense) when gameplay feels so random at a low level?

it’s not random! it’s automatic! it’s a feature. why don’t you like all the boons and conditions popping everywhere??? it makes the game feel fasted paced like call of duty. please don’t talk about things you don’t know, we are breaking new ground with gw2 ground breaking new combat action. energy was silly mechanic from arcade days, we are big-boy mmo pvp now, we have restricted skills and no energy like other esports games like call of duty. just let your mind detach from your body and let your fingers work magic. this is next level kitten

I totally agree… Less conditions and less condition removal would be an amazing thing for the game from a tactical and positioning standpoint… Imagine if getting a cripple or chill on someone meant you could actually kite them. Imagine if you got torment stacked it would actually make your opponent want to stay still. Imagine if poison was an actual counter to healing and bunker builds. It would be nice.

infantrydiv.1620:

I totally agree… Less conditions and less condition removal would be an amazing thing for the game from a tactical and positioning standpoint… Imagine if getting a cripple or chill on someone meant you could actually kite them. Imagine if you got torment stacked it would actually make your opponent want to stay still. Imagine if poison was an actual counter to healing and bunker builds. It would be nice.

I was fiddling around with a sword/sword warrior build earlier, and I ended up dueling a (greatsword? I dunno, he was Asura and really hard to see details on) Ranger, and I noticed that even with Leg Specialist, multiple ways of applying Cripple, and even Stomp and Bull’s Charge, it was really hard to keep him slowed down. I don’t know jack about the Ranger class, so I don’t know what it was that was taking Cripple and Immobilize off him so quickly (looks like there’s a 30 point trait that transfers conditions to the pet, maybe that was it), but I was spending a lot of time slowed down, while he was spending most of the time zipping around with no conditions and Swiftness.

Near as I could tell, it was happening as automatically as me applying those Cripples and Immobilizes, and it’s not factoring in both me and him spamming our dodge like crazy. Between condition removal speed and evasion… it just feels excessive.

Switched back to my Warhorn build for the next game, and… it’s really pretty ridiculous how easily I was removing/converting conditions on myself and teammates.

I don’t know enough about the game to say what should be done about it, if anything, but it just doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s because WoW is the only other MMORPG with PvP I’ve ever cared to pay attention to, and things worked… quite a bit different there.

infantrydiv.1620:

I totally agree… Less conditions and less condition removal would be an amazing thing for the game from a tactical and positioning standpoint… Imagine if getting a cripple or chill on someone meant you could actually kite them. Imagine if you got torment stacked it would actually make your opponent want to stay still. Imagine if poison was an actual counter to healing and bunker builds. It would be nice.

Good post,

currently the way the game is designed you have to spam conditions at a rapid pace to keep them up and you have to cleanse conditions just as rapidly in order to not succumb to them instantly.

Boon removal is pointless when boons just get reapplied 2 seconds later. Oh, I just used a cooldown to steal Protection from a Ranger? Nevermind, it’s right back up again. Same applies to the game in general.

Even with a Thief spaming boon removals every 3 seconds you can still maintain a number of boons on you.

Conditions are in a similar place, just on the opposite side.

Conditions are only good if you can “bomb” them like Necros or Engineers. Then they are overpowered. But builds focusing on a single condition type are not, because condition cleanse is so abundant.

the ability to apply condis this way and boons…is one of the reason the skill lvl is so kitten easy. its not like in gw1 where you have to spread poison or…you have to land a deepwound…or you have to interrupt a kill or land a shame or diversion or catch a spike with sb or infuse. you don’t really need to do anything but use boons…use condi…or dodge.

PizzaSHARK.2741:

I just feel it’s dumb when PvP honestly just feels like it’s about mashing buttons rather than managing conditions, boons, and playing intelligently.

I really enjoy condition management, more from the defensive side than the offensive side. On the defensive side, there’s a ton of micro and really fast decision making, which I love. Although there’s a ton of strategy to both sides in duels and 1v2s. Not as much in team fights because guardians tend to toss out party cleansing that can’t really be predicted, interrupted or baited. So yes, that can start to feel a little spammy.

At the same time, I’d hate to see support get a massive nerf. Condition application is strong enough to make condition removal important. I guess we could nerf both across the board, but honestly, that would probably just lessen the importance of support cleanses and teamwork, as condi removal support would then be just a bunch of long cooldowns that hard counter some other long cooldowns. Honestly everyone would probably just take a a couple of personal cleanses and call it good.

NevirSayDie.6235:

PizzaSHARK.2741:

I just feel it’s dumb when PvP honestly just feels like it’s about mashing buttons rather than managing conditions, boons, and playing intelligently.

I really enjoy condition management, more from the defensive side than the offensive side. On the defensive side, there’s a ton of micro and really fast decision making, which I love. Although there’s a ton of strategy to both sides in duels and 1v2s. Not as much in team fights because guardians tend to toss out party cleansing that can’t really be predicted, interrupted or baited. So yes, that can start to feel a little spammy.

At the same time, I’d hate to see support get a massive nerf. Condition application is strong enough to make condition removal important. I guess we could nerf both across the board, but honestly, that would probably just lessen the importance of support cleanses and teamwork, as condi removal support would then be just a bunch of long cooldowns that hard counter some other long cooldowns. Honestly everyone would probably just take a a couple of personal cleanses and call it good.

I can agree with that. I guess the key is to find a happy medium somewhere. I think a starting place might be to limit accessibility to self-curing (particularly the kind with small cooldowns, such as Cleansing Ire) to deeper within their respective trait trees, to make them inaccessible to people wanting to dip into a tree to grab something juicy without sacrificing too much.

I feel Warrior trees, in particular, are bad about this (Cleansing Ire as mentioned, Dogged March, etc), and may be part of why the general consensus seems to be that they get too much for too little.

I feel like condition and boon management (the upkeep and removal of both) should primarily be the domain of support-oriented players, outside of utility skills.

PizzaSHARK.2741:

infantrydiv.1620:

I totally agree… Less conditions and less condition removal would be an amazing thing for the game from a tactical and positioning standpoint… Imagine if getting a cripple or chill on someone meant you could actually kite them. Imagine if you got torment stacked it would actually make your opponent want to stay still. Imagine if poison was an actual counter to healing and bunker builds. It would be nice.

I was fiddling around with a sword/sword warrior build earlier, and I ended up dueling a (greatsword? I dunno, he was Asura and really hard to see details on) Ranger, and I noticed that even with Leg Specialist, multiple ways of applying Cripple, and even Stomp and Bull’s Charge, it was really hard to keep him slowed down. I don’t know jack about the Ranger class, so I don’t know what it was that was taking Cripple and Immobilize off him so quickly (looks like there’s a 30 point trait that transfers conditions to the pet, maybe that was it), but I was spending a lot of time slowed down, while he was spending most of the time zipping around with no conditions and Swiftness.

Near as I could tell, it was happening as automatically as me applying those Cripples and Immobilizes, and it’s not factoring in both me and him spamming our dodge like crazy. Between condition removal speed and evasion… it just feels excessive.

Switched back to my Warhorn build for the next game, and… it’s really pretty ridiculous how easily I was removing/converting conditions on myself and teammates.

I don’t know enough about the game to say what should be done about it, if anything, but it just doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s because WoW is the only other MMORPG with PvP I’ve ever cared to pay attention to, and things worked… quite a bit different there.

Anet could do so much for this game by simply making condition damage augment/supplementary to ‘vanilla’ damage. With condition damage as a secondary form of damage, we could then talk about toning down condition removal which would allow soft control conditions such as chill, cripple, immobilize to really shine when used in a smart way to contribute to offense or defense.

PizzaSHARK.2741:

I feel like condition and boon management (the upkeep and removal of both) should primarily be the domain of support-oriented players, outside of utility skills.

I like that approach. Although we need do need adequate personal cleansing, or condition builds will rule 1v1s. So maybe it’s just a few specific things, such as cleansing ire, that should be changed.

Fastest and best fix seems to be…
-make conditions more into debuffs.
-switch most (like on amulets) condition dmg to condition duration.

To do that conditions would be soemthing like…
-Bleed
deal less dmg for each stack on you, possibly gain an additional stack for 2~s whenever you use an ability while bleeding, possibly take a lil dmg per stack/sec.
(spamming bleed on one target is decent, spreading it out and keeping it on multiple targets is ideal, much more strategic/skill based)
-Burn
aoes out mediocre dmg and some vulnerability stacks from the person burning.
-Weakness
short duration (caps at sumthin like 5~s) debuff that does something like… halves the dmg you do on crit.
-Imob
Won’t stop dodge rolling but will make you have a higher chance of being crit.

This will leave…
-Conditions as situational and not benifitial to be blindly spammed.
-The conditions on most weapons will only be an addition to your spec (it’s not like if you don’t spec into condition dmg they will be useless).
-Conditions will rarely be a primary source of dmg.
-Conditions will add allot of teamwork/coordination
-Conditions will match the cleansing Anet made, conditions won’t require cleansing in a spec just for the spec to be playable.

Yes rebalancing would have to happen to make some classes/specs viable again..
But who gives a kitten when the game is playing so much better?