Guild Wars 2

I was once one of those people who disliked conditions and all it stood for. Passive damage. Similarly I was against the passive damage from phantasms. If you are in the predicament I’m in think of it like this: Dealing with conditions is one of the rules of the game. You can either deal with it and find effective strategies to counter it and generally be more aware, or you can QQ.

Good players tend to choose one option over the other.

so what is the point of this thread?

TheWalkingDead.7298:

so what is the point of this thread?

I thought the point was self-evident but I guess I overestimated people’s capacity for deductive reasoning.

The problem now is that if you want to “deal” with the condition heavy meta, you screw yourself in terms of stunbreakers/damage ending up with a subpar build which (sometimes) still wont help you against conditions

I get what you are saying, about the stunbreakers atleast. If you are building condition removal you are indirectly still building for damage because you have to be alive to do damage…

Different classes get different mileage from stun breaks. Most stuns can be avoided through a variety of ways pre-application dodge/block/invul etc. (exception: Baslisk venom) And stun skills generally tend to be on a long cooldown. Not so with conditions, as most conditions are applied through either auto-attacks or ground spam. If you are a ranged character and can confidently avoid ground spam then you might have the luxury of investing into CC-breaks/immunity.

Consider also, about half the classes in the game rely heavily on conditions. These include rangers, necros, eles and to a lesser extent engis. Thiefs (caltrap/evasion thiefs) and warriors can also spec for condition, but seldom do. Without adequate condition removal/avoidance you already know the outcome of every fight against them before you even engage.

Geff.1930:

These include rangers, necros, eles and to a lesser extent engis.

Do you even engi?

Most engineer build use a pistol and grenades. That gives them access to bleeds, poison, chill, immob, cripple, confusion, burning, chill and blind.

Compared to an elementalist, engineer is way better at spreading lots of different conditions.

vinceftw.5086:

Geff.1930:

These include rangers, necros, eles and to a lesser extent engis.

Do you even engi?

Most engineer build use a pistol and grenades. That gives them access to bleeds, poison, chill, immob, cripple, confusion, burning, chill and blind.

Compared to an elementalist, engineer is way better at spreading lots of different conditions.

I admit, out of all the classes engi is my least played. Most of my experience comes only from fighting against them. I said to a lesser extent engis because it is equally likely that you will see a bunker/CC based engi as you will see a condition based one, from my experience. I was not attempting to diminish their condition granting prowess.

Geff.1930:

vinceftw.5086:

Geff.1930:

These include rangers, necros, eles and to a lesser extent engis.

Do you even engi?

Most engineer build use a pistol and grenades. That gives them access to bleeds, poison, chill, immob, cripple, confusion, burning, chill and blind.

Compared to an elementalist, engineer is way better at spreading lots of different conditions.

I admit, out of all the classes engi is my least played. Most of my experience comes only from fighting against them. I said to a lesser extent engis because it is equally likely that you will see a bunker/CC based engi as you will see a condition based one, from my experience. I was not attempting to diminish their condition granting prowess.

Same can be said for elementalist though right now, the meta for them is a bursty build, some go bunker but I haven’t encountered a condition one yet.

vinceftw.5086:

Geff.1930:

vinceftw.5086:

Geff.1930:

These include rangers, necros, eles and to a lesser extent engis.

Do you even engi?

Most engineer build use a pistol and grenades. That gives them access to bleeds, poison, chill, immob, cripple, confusion, burning, chill and blind.

Compared to an elementalist, engineer is way better at spreading lots of different conditions.

I admit, out of all the classes engi is my least played. Most of my experience comes only from fighting against them. I said to a lesser extent engis because it is equally likely that you will see a bunker/CC based engi as you will see a condition based one, from my experience. I was not attempting to diminish their condition granting prowess.

Same can be said for elementalist though right now, the meta for them is a bursty build, some go bunker but I haven’t encountered a condition one yet.

That’s because eles simply can’t build for a condition build.

Geff.1930:

I get what you are saying, about the stunbreakers atleast. If you are building condition removal you are indirectly still building for damage because you have to be alive to do damage…

Different classes get different mileage from stun breaks. Most stuns can be avoided through a variety of ways pre-application dodge/block/invul etc. (exception: Baslisk venom) And stun skills generally tend to be on a long cooldown. Not so with conditions, as most conditions are applied through either auto-attacks or ground spam. If you are a ranged character and can confidently avoid ground spam then you might have the luxury of investing into CC-breaks/immunity.

Consider also, about half the classes in the game rely heavily on conditions. These include rangers, necros, eles and to a lesser extent engis. Thiefs (caltrap/evasion thiefs) and warriors can also spec for condition, but seldom do. Without adequate condition removal/avoidance you already know the outcome of every fight against them before you even engage.

Here is the core problem. I equate stuns = stunbreakers because both are on fairly long cooldowns. The same does not hold for conditions (from CERTAIN classes cough engi/necro cough).

Conditions on weapon skills can probably be matched with 1-2 cleansing utilities/traits.
Now we have conditions coming from procs (burning on crit blah blah) and conditions coming from utilities.
It does not take a genius to figure out there is more condition application possible from these classes as compared to standard cleansing.
I honestly feel engi/necro condition builds should be brought down to the levels of other classes (rifle/sword warrior or s/d condition ele or death-blossom/caltrop thief or scepter/staff mesmer). These classes have condition builds that are strong but negligible application power (they can put 2-3 conditions at a time at most or stack 1 condition really high like bleed) compared to engi/necro.

TLDR: Tone engi/necro condition build to the level of others listed and BUFF them in other places to have viable builds (I think engis do cause I see a lot of zerker burst engi right now). Then we can normalize the cleansing from certain high powered AoE cleansers (ele/guardian/ranger) and have a balanced condition meta