Guild Wars 2

When a team has tons of condi removal (2 separate anti condition bunkers) but still gets owned in every fight because zerging is encouraged in these ridiculous maps but still gets bursted due to high AOE conditions something is kittening wrong. People think skyhammer was a skill less map? kitten you got to be kidding me there were way less zerg fights on this map than on any other kitten map in this game where the biggest AOE condi spammer is the winner.

Fix this, all classes need a way to completely wipe conditions in their heal skill I don’t care how it happens just do it. Or tone down the way AOE condition spamming works max the amount of conditions a person can have on them at a time or finally make it so that kittening toughness is a hard counter to conditions the way it is to direct damage. Do not give me the BS that vitality is supposed to counter conditions the way that toughness counters direct damage bold faced lie that is in the way the game works. All classes need their condition removal upped or condition needs to be countered by toughness or protection the boon. This is beyond stupid ANET.

I think the whole community echoes your sentiments and we’ve already talked about condi mitigation and how Weakness and Regeneration should be changed to affect conditions a little bit more.

We’re going to have to give them at least a month or two before we see any major changes.

Anet response: If necros were op then why is no team running 5 necros?
That was a word by word quote from a dev in a stream where people said that necro got overbuffed a few days ago.
I mean srsly? Did any serious playing team run 5 bunker eles back then? No – but even the devs admitted that they were too strong. Did any serious playing team ever run 5 of anything? Still no. Then why did Anet nerf anything if their philosophy is as long as a team isn’t running 5 of xyz, xyz is not op???

At least 90% if the community gets it how stupid the cond spam is atm – especially AE (necro marks). So I guess Anet will just need a couple more months. Sadly I don’t think that by then any good team will be playing anymore since the activity of top teams has dropped significantly since the necro buff patch. Tbh I only see denial, TP and CC scrimming. No ugly, mim, pish etc – maybe they just take a break but nevertheless you can follow any stream from some successful player and hear them QQ about cond meta (like Helseth yesterday) and I completely agree with them.

+ and agree. I main a necro, or did, until the patch. Now, it’s a FOTM faceroll class that takes no skill. There was a point, you could not google ‘op necromancer build gw2’ and find anything, you can now. Those of us who took the time to learn the class and play it well while it was supposedly UP, don’t mean a thing. I quit playing mine for the most part, because I’m either eaten alive by the meta build (because idc what any of yo usay it’s op) or I’m getting constantly insulted because I play a necro.

Also, I’m sick of seeing 2 and 3 necro tpvp teams all the time. Almost as soon as you see it you want to sit at the spawn point and say gg. You could run an engi and necro, get in a team battle, spam condis and epidemic and win. Even if you have no idea what you’re doing, that’s all it takes and it’s gg.

If you wanted to bring in that kind of OP condition spam, we need more ways to counter it. Personally I hope the necro buffs get toned down, a lot. Burning, really? -_- We could use a few bug fixes, stability, trait fixes..like a lot of other classes. Didn’t need those crazy buffs, would gladly take my pre-patch necro over the post-patch necro any freaking day.

Here is what I don’t understand:

GW2 is probably the most Condition damage happy game I have ever played, but instead of streamlining conditions so they are easier to balance they add more…

Anet if anything you should be doing things like reducing the number of stacks of a condition a player can apply in PVP. Such as lowering conditions from 25 stacks to say 15.
Cutting down the number of conditions so they are manageable from a balance perspective. By adding more Conditions and giving classes more access to them all you have done is turn PVP into a who can spam the most conditions at someone.

I am sorry that is not PVP its Player VS bad design decisions. Players that run the OP Condi spam builds are rewarded while people who try anything else throw up their arms and walk away from PVP.

Really in Tournaments there is no reason to run anything but condi spam builds. This is for a number of reasons. First off its the most effective way to fight. Second It requires very little skill, and last its the current trend in GW2. I have watched some of the best bunkers I have ever seen melt in seconds because 2 Condi spammers show up and just rip them apart, and there is nothing that can really be done about it.

I really hope at some point reason sinks in and Anet realizes that they have gone way overboard with Conditions in this game, but till then I see very little actual fun in this game.

ArenaNet seems incapable of addressing the real problems.

The game has been condition heavy since launch, it has always dominated the meta in one form or another.

That and the massive amount of AoE in the game from cleaving weapons and huge AoE ranged attacks across several weapons and utility skills.

The devs acknowledged months ago that AoE was too strong and they would tone it down, nothing has been done since then, they have in fact increased the amount of AoE.

At least this game is free, I’m just playing occasionally until Star Citizen starts to launch.

Condi builds not only do more damage than Power ones (due to toughness/armor/protection etc not affecting Conditions), they are also much more reliable at landing their damage – no need to chain combos with immobilizes/stuns/knockdowns to make sure these 1-2 high damage skills land reliably. Applied conditions keep ticking during evades, blocks, invulnerabilities etc.

So, Condi builds:
- Do more sustained damage than Power builds.
- Are more reliable than Power builds.
- Are easier to play than Power builds.

IMO pure Condi builds are a bad design choice. Conditions should be more about utility and debuffs (Poison, Chill, Cripple, Weakness, Vulnerability fit this role nicely), NOT about spamming them and watching people melt in their shoes.

I gave an opinion on how it could be done and got moaned at coz it was too powerful :/

A simple heal that works different based on class but has the same result – You are healed and ALL conditions are removed, you are then IMMUNE to conditions for X number of seconds based on the number of conditions removed

- This would make it ALOT more interesting 1 Vs 1 fights against Condition spammers. You have to choose WHEN to use your heal, use it to soon and you have not alot of immunity, to late and you could still die via normal damage. The same could be said for the Condition user – does he/she spam the conditions from the start and hope they dont have the condition heal? Or does it do it more slowly building it up over time…

The same could be done (but as a utility) for boon removal. a skill that removes ALL boons and makes the target unable to have boons applied for X number of seconds increased by the number of boons removed.

Of course these both would need to be balanced have a reasonable cool down and work differently based on class For Example -

The Mesmer heal could create a clone/Phantom that takes all of the conditions off and when the Clone/Phantom dies it spreads those conditions to near by targets or when it dies it has a Damage and radius increase based on the conditions it has

What do you guys think?

The thing is that bringing enough condition removal completly kittens up your build because we only have 3 slots for skills that do it (and in very rare ocassions some weapon skills or the heal). For direct damage there is always armor you can get.

A good start would be improving sigil of purity to actually efficiently cleanse condis. And beside that I agree that some AoE is just ridiculous.

Laiboch.4380:

Really in Tournaments there is no reason to run anything but condi spam builds. This is for a number of reasons. First off its the most effective way to fight. Second It requires very little skill, and last its the current trend in GW2. I have watched some of the best bunkers I have ever seen melt in seconds because 2 Condi spammers show up and just rip them apart, and there is nothing that can really be done about it.

I agree completely about condi spam and how out of control it is … simply from a thief perspective and how you can further contribute to your team spamming more condis (venom share?) … but on top of that, damage in the game is insanely high from other sources too, and I don’t think trying to band-aid or “counter” high damage with a condition is the answer.

While I expect damage to be really high in a team fight … I personally think of the amount of damage single players can dish out is just too strong. It feels like damage capabilities can scale so high that there is no real reason to take toughness over more damage (unless you’re a pure bunker trying to bunker and not kill) and even then …

Condis & damage are almost atrociously high, maybe some people like that. Can’t kill a bunker if both damage and condis are lowered? Then lower sustain a little bit too and make proper adjustments to extremely powerful boons like protection, that way there’s room for actual PvP to happen. You know … engaging experiences where you have time to participate in a fight instead of being instantly brought down because you were at 80% health and ate some kind of burst that finished the rest of your health off instantly.

I come from a Thief perspective and it feels like investing in extra toughness, health, and plenty of condition removal almost feel wasted considering how spammable conditions really are, and then how high damage is. Traiting & jewel (celestial) toughness feel as though it doesn’t really do a kitten thing considering just how strong burst potential is, and of course, does nothing against conditions. It feels very limiting in what you’re really viably allowed to choose to play with and be effective.

And that to me is the biggest drag in this game.

The stat “condition damage” is a bad design choice, or, at least, how it is spreaded among trinkets.

It forces you to build completely around conditions to have something useful from them, otherwise the conditions are completely overwhelmed by condition removals, which means hybrid builds aren’t possible at all.

They should do a complete revamp of condition removals, condition weapon sets, condition damage trinkets and how conditions scale with condition damage, imho.

Right now, considering how conditions are balanced, they will always be either too strong or too weak.

No please don’t add more cleansing into the game, that just makes everyone have more compulsory traits and utilities to shove into their builds just to keep up with the “meta”. Fix the source of the issue, the constant reapplication of conditions like burn and terror which deal very high damage with just one application. At least with bleeds you need to stack them up before seeing high dps.

You could have the best solution and it would be worthless, if they don’t recognize that there is in fact a problem.

Med.6150:

You could have the best solution and it would be worthless, if they don’t recognize that there is in fact a problem.

qft

Sadly Anet still thinks s/d thieves are the main issue in this game. Ridiculous…

Jzaku.9765:

No please don’t add more cleansing into the game, that just makes everyone have more compulsory traits and utilities to shove into their builds just to keep up with the “meta”. Fix the source of the issue, the constant reapplication of conditions like burn and terror which deal very high damage with just one application. At least with bleeds you need to stack them up before seeing high dps.

It’s not terror, it’s the conditions. Terror doesn’t do much of anything unless you are covered in condis. Terror/fear hasn’t changed, it deals more damage if you have conditions. The amount of condition spam, the amount of damage it can do, the amount of player damage in general is not balanced well with what a player can take/cleanse, or the HP pool.

In my opinion, conditions should work exactly how degen worked in GW1.

In GW1 you weren’t able to build completely around degen and, if you would do that, you can’t kill anyone without raw damage. That said, degen in GW1 had a relevant role in any form of PvP and were most likely AoE. Their main feature was to apply pressure on the enemy team, dealing damage over time and make the life easier to raw damage professions.

Pretty much the longer the fight will go, the worse conditions get, if enemy team did not had good positioning, and the higher the chances to win were. That was the real definition of attrition and how conditions, I think, are supposed to be.

Degen was overall capped at -10 degen, that means that overspeccing into it in a team leaded to nothing at all.

In GW2, you either have to spec completely into conditions or you will be completely useless. The issue is that conditions and raw damage aren’t complementary as they were in GW1, but mutually exclusive.

Buffing condition removals or nerfing condition damage will lead to nothing. Conditions as they are designed right now will be always either too strong or too weak.

Jesiah.2457:

I come from a Thief perspective and it feels like investing in extra toughness, health, and plenty of condition removal almost feel wasted

Funny, I felt same when I had to invest extra toughness and health and stunbreakers against thieves, what is this nonsense!

Anyway, on topic. First thing I said to myself when I started to play again is that condi vs condi removal war begins. I noticed that from my warrior talent tree where plenty of “anti” condition traits appeared and my condi necro started to do some damage in PvP. Tbh, Epidemic needs to be Elite skill.

Harrier.9380:

IMO pure Condi builds are a bad design choice. Conditions should be more about utility and debuffs (Poison, Chill, Cripple, Weakness, Vulnerability fit this role nicely), NOT about spamming them and watching people melt in their shoes.

That funny feeling, when you read the whole thread and you give everyone a +1 and you are left with nothing more to add…

But I quoted the 1 thing that I also wanted to write, thus I support this idea in the quote 100%.

But anyway my fellow pvpers. I’m pretty sure we will never see huge design changes in GW2, because PvP is only designed around pve in this game, and Anet will never let the pvp team change the whole mechanic just because a few of us that are left in this pvp are crying our faces out here on the forums…

So to conclude:

1. Ridiculous conditions stay
2. Ridiculous AoE spam stays
3. Ridiculous class imbalances stay

Everyone have a good day now.

P.S. Oh and also what sorrow.2364 wrote above… Anet should read that and learn a little something…

A few months ago everyone was on about how there was too many cleanses and Necros couldn’t function properly and Necros were bad and now it’s “Not enough cleanses, too many condis!”

This is definitely not entirely the community’s fault but it definitely is part of the problem. The solution to this problem, (as has been said several times) is not to add more condi removal to the game or nerf condi damage directly but to add more variables that counter condition damage.

VictorTroska.3725:

Jesiah.2457:

I come from a Thief perspective and it feels like investing in extra toughness, health, and plenty of condition removal almost feel wasted

Funny, I felt same when I had to invest extra toughness and health and stunbreakers against thieves, what is this nonsense!

Not sure if you were being sarcastic or serious based purely on that last bit.

My perspective comes from trying builds, in response to high damage, that have 30 into Shadow Arts and 25 into Acrobatics while running Carrion Amulet w/ Celestial jewel. The idea behind that was to not explode instantly to any one player and be a presence during a team fight. Even with 345 additional toughness from traits and jewel while having 19.5k health … I’ve had a glass cannon thief with 20 stacks of blood lust down me before basilisk venom wore off because my stunbreak was on CD. Literally 100% – 0% in under two seconds … :/

I’ve had a similar experience with some elementalists due to lack of stunbreak as well. Except more realistically I was down in about 4 maybe 5 seconds, which isn’t as absurd as what I’ve described thieves have done … but going down in 4 seconds or less by any single class, especially when you’re traited / built with the idea of survival in mind (and at least SOME damage / team support / presence) … makes me quite honestly feel like there is no point in doing anything other than investing almost entirely into damage, at least as a thief.

Like I stated before … this is why I feel limited in what I can viably choose due to this game’s balance. Furthermore, thieves don’t have any way to apply burning, and considering the effort required to get damage out of burning compared to stacking bleeds (also hoping they also aren’t cleansed automatically or converted into boons thanks to RNG) makes me feel even further pigeonholed when compared to just raw burst potential.

When i started playing this game i was a noob in matter of competitive pvp, now i’m slowly realizing how things should work in a game to be competitive.
At first i thought that it would have been fun to play a condition based class, but some time ago i realized that the condition damage stat is just itself a mistake.
Applying conditions on a target is way easier than landing a burst, and conditions are often AoE; then… in order to make a good burst you have to create the right situation and you have to dedicate all your actions to that goal, while with conditions you can just keep applying them and then playing defensively until the targets bleeds out.

At this point my conclusions are that conditions should just be a support to the damage, not the source of the damage. There shouldnt be many condition cleansing abilities so that it would be possible to effectively use them to control the battle.
A good use of conditions i can imagine is….
player A starts stacking vulnerability on B
B keep hitting A
A lands a big hit on B dropping him under 50%, then poisons him.
B heals, but poison reduce its heal. B tries to disengage.
A chills B to slow him down.
B apply weakness on A and protection on himself to max the damage reduction.
A hits B for low dmg.
B immobilize A and hits from distance waiting to recover.
and so on…..

Atm on a 1v1 with a condition spec its more like….

player A hits B.
B puts bleeding, poison, burning, blind, confusion on A.
A tries to hit B, but miss and drops down to 60% hp.
B chills/cripple/immobilize/fear A and kite him, while healing up.
A breaks stun, close gap with B and hit him.
B puts burning, bleeding, chill, blind, weakness on A
A heals, but is still low on HP, tries to reach B
B puts cripple, burning, fear/knockback/evade, bleeding, poison, confusion.
A is overwhelmed by conditions and get downed.

:\ OK, this might seems to bumb down the situation, but the the main idea is that conditions spec mainly has really a lower skill cap compared to burst builds, cause they can apply them from range, while they are both doing damage and pressure/control on the target, and they can still play defensively :|

oh yeah, another QQ tread from jportell. Why don’t you suggest to reduce the damage on mesmer’s shatter builds?
All I read here is: “pls buff my mesmer, nerf anything else I can’t fight back with my current build cause I’m too lazy to change it”
You know what? You can rely on other classes for condi removal. But no, you think your build should be able to do anything and win any other class easily.

Anet seems to take the “Fight Fire with Fire” a bit to far and thats why Conditions are out of control. They seem to think adding MORE and more Conditions to the game will eventually even it out – Unfortunately we all (except Anet) know that it wont.

I personally think that Conditions need a total rework from the ground up, the problem with this is Necromancers. Conditions should supplement a build NOT being the WHOLE purpose of it.

Anet seems to take the “Fight Fire with Fire” a bit to far and thats why Conditions are out of control. They seem to think adding MORE and more Conditions to the game will eventually even it out – Unfortunately we all (except Anet) know that it wont.

I personally think that Conditions need a total rework from the ground up, the problem with this is Necromancers. Conditions should supplement a build NOT being the WHOLE purpose of it.

DOT builds are completely normal in any MMORPG or RPG for that matter. I have no idea why this seems to be shocking to some of you.

Now, necromancers are still overpowered, even though people are clearly taking more condition removal. That’s why I advocate for removing terror’s bonus damage and making Dhuumfire apply torment instead of burning.

I see a lot about how we need to give a net more time to develop these things. But what you fail to understand is that these bugs should have been worked out a long time ago. This is what happens when you release to early, you have no time to develop the game. If they had solo q for example, a lot of these problems we have today and in the past would have been fixed.
I have said it before, a net wants you to buy their shinies and kitten. They don’t care that spvp and wvw are broken because a majority of the people who play these will not purchase their pixels.

Lopez.7369:

DOT builds are completely normal in any MMORPG or RPG for that matter. I have no idea why this seems to be shocking to some of you.

Now, necromancers are still overpowered, even though people are clearly taking more condition removal. That’s why I advocate for removing terror’s bonus damage and making Dhuumfire apply torment instead of burning.

The difference is they are BALANCED. Well mostly. This game is RIDDLED with issues and Conditions are WAY to strong considering how easily they can be applied. Either the damage done/stacks or duration needs to be reduced.

There are too many posts I want to quote here..

@Vicious – Jportell rarely plays a burst mesmer, and has no issues with how he plays his mesmer now except that it seriously lacks condi removal on the scale necessary at the moment to survive (like a few other classes), he’s one of the best bunker mesmers I know. The only thing I ever hear him whine about with his mesmer, is that it can’t handle conditions.

@ Lopez – DoTs, sure. The way conditions are right now, is beyond that. There are a couple of classes right now, that can hit you with 20 stacks of bleeding (heavy at that) right off the bat. You remove/transfer those bleeds, and in two seconds or less you have them all again. No one can sustain a fight like that for very long. I can trait my necro into condition duration, use BiP, and the bleed from that alone will do 15k worth of damage if you are unable to clear it in time; add to that the fact I’ll be dumping every other condition in the game on you (except confusion, it’s the only one a necro doesn’t have) while you’re trying to get rid of the one. Conditions are very much out of control at the moment.

@ Dirame – I really wasn’t on the forums about necros until after the patch.. and had absolutely no problem with mine before the patch (aside from the ridiculous lack of any type of stability). Myself and quite a few others that I know of very much miss our necros before the patch, and would gladly have it back. I know that’s not the majority population sentiment but..

What Sorrow said, sounds like a solid idea to me. And it’s not just the necromancers, conditions need a rework in general, from the ground up.

I’ll add this here as well. I think more than even the conditions themselves being an issue right now is lack of proper counter play in avoiding them to begin with.

Lets face it – traited Necro marks are kitten near impossible to use any skill to counter. They are unblockable – no blocking when you see the Necro go staff and start throwing crap under your feet. Monstrous area covered – easy to hit lots of enemies at once as well as requiring basically no aim whatsoever to land on anyone. Apply very long conditions – on top of how easy it is to land these, they apply very long conditions.

Necro marks need a short delay on them before activating, similar to how Engineer bombs require a fuse before they explode. You need a chance to dodge for counter play. Your chance at dodging currently is just running around and dodging every time the Necro waves his arm – hope you don’t waste a dodge on a couple bleeds only to be hit with poison, chill and fear immediately after!

Brings me to the next point.

Lack of skill animations for Necro marks and Engineer bombs.

AOE conditions are POWERFUL. Its absolutely silly that there is absolutely no way to tell which thing you’re going to be dodging.

Which mark is that Necro mark? Is it going to bleed me, or maybe give me a long poison and chill, or is it going to Fear me?! Hmm well I only have so many dodges, I should probably decide which of those are most important to dodge and have the ability to do so.

Anyone have any idea how to tell? All look the same to me.

Engineer bombs are no better, but at least they have the kitten activation delay already so you can dodge away from them.

But is that just an auto attack bomb, or will it blow up and give me 5 stacks of confusion? I should probably know so I can dodge the correct one.

(I’ve mained Engi since beta and I’ve always thought it was silly all the bombs looked the same – now its clear AOE condi is becoming an issue and this could definitely help…and in a way that rewards skill not just nerfs condis)

I really think some stuff like this needs to be addressed, before going forward with reducing condition damage overall, etc.

I am not a pvp expert, but there are a lot of the same issues elsewhere, it is just amplified here. I personally feel like conditions on the elementalist and engineer flamethrower are handled perfectly. They are accessories to the skills and a good amount of the damage is split between raw and conditions. You never see a pure condition ele b/c he can’t condi burst (no weapon that is just pure condis), but taking some condition damage or condition duration is still very helpful because of how they augment your regular damage.

Now the problem is when you have a “pure condition” weapon like bombs, marks, and – to some extent – grenades, you push the meta towards “pure condis” or no condis. In otherwords, the burns and bleeds the ele put out end up wasted b/c they are pushed to the back by the condi application of a dedicated specialist. Anet wants you to care about conditions, but being a contributor is a lot different from being the whole show.

Therefore, if you want to fix condition spam, simply fix the AOE conditions to apply alot shorter durations and fewer stacks so that they don’t dominate. In the same way that staff ele is penalized with lower damage #’s b/c they can aoe, aoe conditions should be penalized b/c they can aoe. Conditions can still be strong on pure-condition builds, but they should have to be singly-targeted or weak aoe. In other words, you can either output very few stacks of bleeds or short burns/poisons/fears etc if you want to aoe, or you can have a weapon that applies a lot bleeds to a single target.

In some way, the “condition meta” is just another rehash of the complaints about aoe.

vicious.5683:

oh yeah, another QQ tread from jportell. Why don’t you suggest to reduce the damage on mesmer’s shatter builds?
All I read here is: “pls buff my mesmer, nerf anything else I can’t fight back with my current build cause I’m too lazy to change it”
You know what? You can rely on other classes for condi removal. But no, you think your build should be able to do anything and win any other class easily.

Mesmer shatter is halted by one simple button press. (Take engi rifle 4 cures immobilized BAM shatter avoided.)

This thread has jack to do with mesmer. Just because a mesmer is in my signature doesn’t make it my only class (Actually been doing rifle bunker engi lately.) And lets put it this way unless a class has a complete wipe of conditions in their healing skill they are usually going to lose against any condition based class in a 1v1 and if one team has more condition based classes than the other team (say they are a burst bunker comp) the condition team comp will win every time.
Even with the engineers condition immunity at 25% it is still next to impossible to keep up with the insane amount of AOE conditions being thrown around.

The two biggest culprits necros and HGH engis. I know it sucks that bomb engis have less animations but bomb engis are easily kited and and only have two bombs that should be greatly feared bomb 2 which is a fire field and concussion bomb (pvp confusion=LOL).

Also i dont think my build should be able to do everything at once. I do however think that a proper bunker build of any class with runes of melandru should at least have a chance to live through a 2v1 against to condition heavy classes (THE POINT OF A BUNKER IS TO FIGHT OUTMANNED MATCHES!) until his team gets there. But right now it is not how it works any bunker of any class is usually bursted down faster by two “burst” condition builds (yes they exist) than by two regular GC power based classes. If i remember right you main a necro and would not want to see their current god status nerfed but it needs to happen. Necro and HGH engis need brought down (Engis have so many other great builds).

Some options i would like to see that i think would be good:
Anet Can either up condition counters through the following methods:

1. Regeneration now stacks intensity. Bleeds which in this game are the antithesis of regeneration in the boon——>Condi equation stack in intensity. So why not make regen do the same. It would actually mean healing can be a decent counter to the ridiculous amount of bleeds on a player. It would also give those classes which have crap access to condi removal but great access to regen heal through the conditions.

2. More traits that counter conditions: By this i mean give more of the classes better access to condi removal in their adept trees. Mesmer menders purity is a good example of this gone wrong… What good is one heal skill to remove one condition going to do a mesmer when they have just been spite signeted by a necro. That is an instant non-elite I win button… Which is not okay.

3. Reduced damage from conditions on you. A minor grandmaster trait for certain classes IDC which could be 3% reduced damage from conditions for each condition on you. This would not completely negate condition damage but it would at least give people that try their kitten dest to bunker points have a legitimate chance at doing it against condition damage classes. (We have a boon that increases condi damage AND power.) So we need a way to fit in reducing condition damage AND power attacks….

Now in the interest of fairness and to keep anti- condition bunker builds from still being able to steam roll through GC builds traits like ele and engi x% more damage for each boon on you need removed. These could be replaced with the reduced damage trait that was mentioned above.

Or Anet can fix the AOE condition spam through punishing the way conditions work now:

1. Remove or greatly and I mean greatly reduce the damage from terror. Mesmer halting strike would be a good comparison on things that usually don’t do damage unless traited and now it only does damage if the foe is actually interrupted. Thief mug (which was nerfed for obvious reasons) is another good comparison…. It is something that does way too much damage for too little effort.
Dhuumfire should be replaced with torment. I think torment is much more fitting for a necro than burning that never made sense to begin with.
Continued next post:

@ Vicious Pt II:

Now on to HGH…. Might stack runes should all have their duration decreased to the same level of the protection/boon duration equivalents. Why is someone that builds for a high uptime on protection has to suffer more compared to someone trying to infinitely stack might. This change alone of reducing all might stack runes by 5% would fix the issue with HGH engi condi spam and make it be more tolerable. Bomb engi is not as bad as grenade engi simply because bomb requires you to be melee, bomb usually procs burns, and confusion, HGH procs burn, bleed, poision chill and vuln…. Big difference you see…

Lastly on to your very childish and derogatory statement of: all i read here is “pls buff my mesmer, nerf anything else I can’t fight back with my current build cause I’m too lazy to change it”
I change my builds regularly and theory craft several builds for the classes I play and the glaring gaping sore that is staring everyone in the face is this; in the current meta no matter how much condition removal/immunity you pack the high amount of aoe condition burst and pressure will win out everytime. There is no hard counter to condition builds… This is something that should be addressed quickly. I am sorry you don’t see it but there are several others in this community that do and they are fed up with not having a fighting chance because they don’t run cheese FOTM meta builds.

I’ve tried almost every build on every single class and still they just don’t work. You can’t bunker, you can’t run skill-based power builds, you can’t even go glass efficiently, because in 2 secs you go down in AoE, be it conditions or not.
Spent dozens of hours theorycrafting, reading forums, searching builds, trying to set them up with various runes/sigils and some traitswaps. Then I get into pvp and guess what? AoE fest, everybody down, the fastest team to stomp 1st basically wins the teamfight.
Don’t know if I should just give up on my hopes to see some balance in this AoE Wars.

The credibility of a persons post is directly relative to how objective it is and the manners used to present the info. By the time I had finished reading, “…Fix this, I don’t care how…” “..kitten this…kitten that…” I had pretty much decided your an kitten. People tend not to listen to kittens. I appreciate your passionate on some level and have strong feeling, but aggressive is aggressive and rude is rude. No one listens to blind fury, despite how deep the well of passion is that it came from . Just say’n.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

The credibility of a persons post is directly relative to how objective it is and the manners used to present the info. By the time I had finished reading, “…Fix this, I don’t care how…” “..kitten this…kitten that…” I had pretty much decided your an kitten. People tend not to listen to kittens. I appreciate your passionate on some level and have strong feeling, but aggressive is aggressive and rude is rude. No one listens to blind fury, despite how deep the well of passion is that it came from . Just say’n.

The OP was made after a slew of matches that were against nothing but necros and condi spam teams. It is the meta and there is no direct hard counter. Also read the second posts I have made you will find they are much more objective.

What about changing the greater marks trait? Make the larger marks the default for a staff, but blockable. So there is still some aoe, but you can at least dodge/evade/block it. Don’t really see the point in a definitive tell for which mark is being put down, that would make it too easy..but taking away the unblockable characteristic may help.

Well i agree condition spam atm is simply ridiculous, but i don’t think it’s an easy thing to balance. Everyone can come on the forumZ, cry and/or make suggestions, but real game is different. It’s so easy to say “anet devs suck they don’t know how to balance this game here are my awesome suggestions!!!!!111”. Let’s talk about necros, the mistake they made imo was giving them burning. Terror is not the problem, fear is definitely strong but without that no one is going to use necros again in tpvp. The problem with necros is different imo, the class is poorly designed, way too much aoe, weapons like necro staff (4 huge aoe marks impossible to block) should not exist in this game.
The whole physical/cond dmg system is bad tbh, but ppl need to realize conditions are meant to actually kill, they are not there just to annoy. The problem is they are just too easy to reapply and, again, way too many skills apply conditions aoe. That’s the real problem with this game, the aoe is insane. I still don’t understand why they designed classes with so many kittening aoe skills in a game mode based around point capping. Aoe spamming is again the reason why the other “pvp” mode, wvw, sucks. I’m 100% sure devs have realized how bad aoe spamming (exp aoe condi) is in this game, they are not stupid. The problem is they probably don’t know how to fix this, and i don’t really blame them for this. Sadly i think it’s too late, they should rework way too many things, way too many weapons and skills.
@OP: although i agree with most of your points, no, i don’t think your are unbiased.

I am absolutely not unbiased. I acknowledge this and I understand it completely. However this does not change the fact that the majority of the people playing this game completely acknowledge that AOE condition spam is out of control.

I have outlined the things that I think would help correct this. Whether or not they get implemented is up to the powers that be ( i can only hope that they have something better or they truly do listen to the forums.)

My bias comes from match after match of facing nothing but AOE mindless condition spam.

jportell.2197:

My bias comes from match after match of facing nothing but AOE mindless condition spam.

Lol i remember a tpvp match i played today. The enemy team had like 1 condi necro, 1 engi, 1 mm, 1 guard and 1 war (with longbow aoe burn ofc). Lol we had one fight at mid point it was just pathetic. Minions everywhere, the engi dropped his kittening supply drop (one of the most retared elites in game) and started spamming nades, the other necro spammed marks like no tomorrow…dunno about the others but i’m sure the guard was there as well spamming ww every time was off cd. On top of that we had a necro as well…other marks…and our mesmer even dropped that kittening c storm on point while shattering around, just cos there was not enough confusion already. “Luckily” we managed to spam more than them. And that was nothing, i’ve seen worse.

Spamming marks? Lol of the day.
Do you even know what marks actually do and their CDs?

@Portel
Still the only I read is: “my mesm must be able to bunker alone two necros for as long as needed or they’re disgustingly OP”

Bunkering its the most stupid concept in a conquest mode. And condis came to change the current meta. That’s what devs want. Stop complaining for not being able to burstdown/bunker any class in 1v2 situations

vicious.5683:

Spamming marks? Lol of the day.
Do you even know what marks actually do and their CDs?

@Portel
Still the only I read is: “my mesm must be able to bunker alone two necros for as long as needed or they’re disgustingly OP”

Bunkering its the most stupid concept in a conquest mode. And condis came to change the current meta. That’s what devs want. Stop complaining for not being able to burstdown/bunker any class in 1v2 situations

Yes I do I also know that while reapers mark has a pretty high CD Chillbains/mark of blood aren’t too bad in comparison. And be able to kill any class 2v1? No That is fine… What bugs me is when a full on bunker guard or d/d cleric ele still has no chance at holding on for more than 5s in a 2v1 against 2 condi spam classes. And its not just marks Scepter is pretty ridiculous for conditiosn Scepter 2 just adds to it then we have signet of spite or corrupt boon/epidemic. Please tell me more about how necromancers can’t spam conditions. I am not asking to be able to hold 2 condition based classes on a point indefinitely I am asking for people that try to build bunkers (pretty much still required to try doing) to have a chance at lasting longer than a few seconds.

Better idea….scrap conquest.

This garbage format hurts every other format in the game because in wvw people sure as hell haven’t got to stand on a point or face losing.

This wouldn’t be an issue if people weren’t funneled into some small circle. But necro will be nerfed, they’ll be back to the garbage pile in wvw, and they’ll still remain in the garbage pile they’ve been on for PvE for months.

This balancing classes around the issue of being funneled into a spot ripe for aoe needs to stop.

Make it less about holding points and more about achieving objectives and killing the opposition.

I remember playing condi Necro before the patch. You throw on a couple bleeds, and wait for them to get cleansed, then you unleashed everything you could. Now? Just Staff 2+3+5, Scepter 2+5+3, DS 3+5, Fear just before the Immob. During this time you probably did about 5k burn damage during your button spam. One opponent should be nearly dead, and other enemies are half in the bag because most of this is AoE.

I stopped playing Necro with the new changes, because it is just too mindless right now. That’s not fun to me. So now I play Warrior. Pop Zerker Stance, and go ape on a Necro for 8s, and hope I can kill him.

I’d like to add that I think health pools and healing should be raised across the board. EU or NA, doesn’t matter, doing as much damage as you possibly can seems to be the narrative. Offensive Stats > Defensive Stats.

it’s not a solution to keep adding more stuff in game to counter the previous stuff which was added!

Necro have to many problems, personally i thin kDeath Shroud having a new health bar is wrong, it should give them the new skills and use the bar for skills but it should NOT be another health bar, The Staff is to strong as well, the MoB needs to have its cool down increased a mark that cant be blocked with a very big range every 6 seconds is just to strong. The mark sizes with the trait is TO big and making them unblockable is a moronic thing to do Anet – though they arent exactly known for being good when it comes to class balances.

I think the engi/necro needs to scale down to what the trap ranger is now. As a trap ranger you actually have to set up your pet cc/spike trap so you can get in your full damage from burn/poison trap. Also these traps are nothing compared to the spam of necros/engi which are also usually way stronger. They apply for longer durations/more stacks/longer duration/longer range they can be applied from, and they also don’t have to put 30 points into a trait line for them to actually be viable. I still play a trap ranger because i enjoy the playstyle and the skill it really takes to be a successful trap ranger in high level play. Weapons wise/utility wise necro/engi just need to scale down to what a ranger is or somewhere along those lines.

vashio.6297:

I think the engi/necro needs to scale down to what the trap ranger is now. As a trap ranger you actually have to set up your pet cc/spike trap so you can get in your full damage from burn/poison trap. Also these traps are nothing compared to the spam of necros/engi which are also usually way stronger. They apply for longer durations/more stacks/longer duration/longer range they can be applied from, and they also don’t have to put 30 points into a trait line for them to actually be viable. I still play a trap ranger because i enjoy the playstyle and the skill it really takes to be a successful trap ranger in high level play. Weapons wise/utility wise necro/engi just need to scale down to what a ranger is or somewhere along those lines.

And that’s because…?
Its ridiculous how wrong are you in almost everything you said about necros.
Where are the numbers? Where are the videos of you dodging the marks/not walking into spectral wall and still being owned?
Untill you defend your words with numbers this is pure QQing

vicious.5683:

vashio.6297:

I think the engi/necro needs to scale down to what the trap ranger is now. As a trap ranger you actually have to set up your pet cc/spike trap so you can get in your full damage from burn/poison trap. Also these traps are nothing compared to the spam of necros/engi which are also usually way stronger. They apply for longer durations/more stacks/longer duration/longer range they can be applied from, and they also don’t have to put 30 points into a trait line for them to actually be viable. I still play a trap ranger because i enjoy the playstyle and the skill it really takes to be a successful trap ranger in high level play. Weapons wise/utility wise necro/engi just need to scale down to what a ranger is or somewhere along those lines.

And that’s because…?
Its ridiculous how wrong are you in almost everything you said about necros.
Where are the numbers? Where are the videos of you dodging the marks/not walking into spectral wall and still being owned?
Untill you defend your words with numbers this is pure QQing

Understand the point of this thread? Because your acting like i’m talking about 1v1 or something in that area. Over all necros have much more aoe condition spam then a ranger does oh and also dodge marks/walk into spectral wall. Thats like sayings someone dodges over my traps/doesn’t trigger my traps because they know where they are or dodge my pets cc. This thread is talking about aoe condition spamming. ranger in no means has the aoe condition spamming on the level of necro/engi. This might be what they need to help balance the meta of the game but we already know its probably not going to happen anytime soon or at all.

vashio.6297:

vicious.5683:

vashio.6297:

I think the engi/necro needs to scale down to what the trap ranger is now. As a trap ranger you actually have to set up your pet cc/spike trap so you can get in your full damage from burn/poison trap. Also these traps are nothing compared to the spam of necros/engi which are also usually way stronger. They apply for longer durations/more stacks/longer duration/longer range they can be applied from, and they also don’t have to put 30 points into a trait line for them to actually be viable. I still play a trap ranger because i enjoy the playstyle and the skill it really takes to be a successful trap ranger in high level play. Weapons wise/utility wise necro/engi just need to scale down to what a ranger is or somewhere along those lines.

And that’s because…?
Its ridiculous how wrong are you in almost everything you said about necros.
Where are the numbers? Where are the videos of you dodging the marks/not walking into spectral wall and still being owned?
Untill you defend your words with numbers this is pure QQing

Do you spvp much/understand the point of this thread? Because your acting like i’m talking about 1v1 or something in that area. Over all necros have much more aoe condition spam then a ranger does oh and also dodge marks/walk into spectral wall. Thats like sayings someone dodges over my traps/doesn’t trigger my traps because they know where they are or dodge my pets cc. This thread is talking about aoe condition spamming. ranger in no means has the aoe condition spamming on the level of necro/engi. This might be what they needs to help balance the meta of the game but we already know its probably not going to happen anytime soon or at all.

What about you tell your team to not stay all 5 people together in a point? What about start dodging when necro put down the first mark? Then donge in the rest of them to nullify all the condi pressure.
And again where are the numbers for your QQing? Or do you just repeat whatever you read on this forum?

what occurs to me isn’t that the condis themselves are OP, any one person, condi/pow/whatever, given the proper spec, ought to be able to be a “burst” class … a 1v1 condi user with a maximum condi burst ought to be able to burst someone as a power user can burst someone down.

this should require skill and attention on the condi user’s part, just like it does for a power user, and ought to be able to accept counters like cleanses/dodges just as a power user is countered by blocks, etc.

by my count, this is working as intended. a 1v1 necro or engi is not a massive threat because all good builds have good counters.

the problem then, is that the aoe spam of condis thanks to epidemic/etc allows necros (in particular) to spread their condi burst damage over an entire group instead of against one target. this would be the same as a warrior walking into a mellieu and being able to drop a 100b on everyone at once from 900 range away, or a thief being able to unstealth and backstab an entire group at once.

we all know that all aoe abilities have a 5 target maximum (or at least they are intended to).

what if …

there were a check in place that,

if (applied to one opponent)
then condi effectiveness = 100% per target
else if (applied to two opponents)
then condi effectiveness = 85% per target
else if (applied to three or more opponents)
then condi effectiveness = 60% per target

such that the brunt of the condi’s effect is spread through the mellieu in a way that does not exponentially increase the condi user’s effectiveness against groups vs single opponents.

or something like this?