Guild Wars 2

The problem with conditions is in removal.

MAIN POINTS:

1.) There is no tactical play to conditions because players do not have control over which specific conditions they can remove at a given time.

2.) Conditions have an extremely high application rate that mixes both damaging conditions and control conditions, when singular removals are used its up in the air on if it will remove the one critical condition stack that is killing you.

-Scenario A. A burn guardian stacks 10 burns on you and a cripple in 2 attacks, your singular cleanse removes the cripple and your dead.

3.) The only true reliable condition defense is a full clear, because is guaranteed to remove what you need to at that time.

4.) Burning and bleeding are really just damage, the problem is there is no reliable active defense outside of a full clear if you have more than one condition on you.

THE SOLUTION (WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE A LONG TIME AGO):

Condtional removal skills need to be split between removing DAMAGE conditions and CONTROL conditions:

Damage Conditions:
Burning
Bleeding
Torment
Confusion
Poison

Control Conditions:
Chill
Cripple
Entangle
Slow
Weakness
Blind
Vulnerability
Taunt
Fear

Doing this allows players to tactically make the decision on if they want to remove the damaging conditions to stay alive and give control to the enemy due to being stacked with control conditions OR remove the control conditions and attempt to DPS race the enemy under stacks of damaging conditions.

Players also get better defensive options because they can remove damaging conditions reliably. No current player can correctly time removals due to how fast and easy conditions are to apply. It’s like trying to catch floating dollar bills in one of those sham air blowing machines.

EXAMPLE OF A REWORK:

Warrior:

Runes:

Trooper: Remove one damaging condition from up to 5 allies when you use a shout (ICD increased because its more powerful now)

Skills:

Shake It Off/Shrug it Off: Remove one damaging condition from nearby allies, if you have no damaging conditions remove a control condition.
Berserker Stance: Lose all control conditions and gain resistance
Mending: Functionality changed. Recharges in 15 seconds and removes all damaging conditions. For each stack of damaging conditions removed, recharge is increased by 5 seconds.
Healing Signet: Remove all damage conditions (no longer grants resistance)
Signet of Stamina: Remove all conditions

Traits:

Brawler’s Recovery: Remove one control condition on weapon swap
Cleansing Ire: Remove one damaging condition for each bar of adrenaline spent when your burst attack hits an enemy.
Savage Instinct: Remove all control conditions when going into rage
Quick Breathing: Remove one control condition on warhorn skill use, if you have no control conditions remove one damaging condition.

I would also say that the way conditions are applied could be looked into as well. I view conditions as being a damage type that is designed to wear away at the enemy, not just stacking a ton at once and burning the target down…with the exception burning of course. There could be an interesting balance where condition removal is less common or powerful – but in return the conditions last longer but do slower initial damage. It would force you to wait to cleanse until you had reached a certain point to get maximum value.

It would be a hard balance to achieve, but it would make conditions feel much more unique to power. Things would have to be rebalanced in PvE…maybe upping the maximum number of stacks more or having some damaging conditions affect break bars a little.

Condi remove is not random. It depends on the order of application. Last applied -> first cleansed. So you either want to cleanse immediately to get rid of the dangerous condis before they can get covered, or you want to wait out short cover condis or till another dmg condi application puts the stack on top before you cleanse. Of course it is not always possible to get rid of the dmg, but otherwise condi builds wouldn’t work at all.

BurrTheKing.8571:

It would force you to wait to cleanse until you had reached a certain point to get maximum value.[…]

That’s already the case most of the time. So many people waste their cleanses. You don’t have to cleanse as soon you get hit by some condis. Timing your cleanses well is very important when fighting condi builds and many people stuggle with this, which is probably the main reason, why so many complain about those “op” condis. Lowering the dmg won’t work as long there is so much healing in the game, that can completely shut down low dmg over time. You have to kill stuff fast in oder to kill at all.

What if they just changed the formula cleansing. Instead of just cleansing the first condi they could prioritize the most dangerous condis first. for example Burning>consusion>torment>bleed>Poison>Chill>Taunt>fear>imobalize>slow>Vuln>Blind>Slow>cripple. This isn’t EXACTLY how I would do it but I think its a good example. I think it would be a mistake to separate different types of condi cleanse. I think it would over complicate the game and make abilities obsolete and push the game in a direction that is more only one build is viable. I appreciate your idea and I think it could address the condi problem. I think cleanse priority would be best. I would even add stacks as a priority. I would also suggest either buffing cleanses or nerfing application.

to summarize

- Have Condi cleanse priority on dangerous condis

- splitting condi cleanses may be dangerous for games health (idk for sure)

- condi Cleansing sources should be buffed or condi application should be nerfed

on a final note I think power is at a good place it’s just that condi is a little too strong atm. once they nerf that then the game should be at a healthy state. but that’s just my opinion but I could be wrong.

“Most dangerous” varies from situation to situation. Sometimes you want to cleanse immob, blind, taunt/fear, weakness, bleed, poison, … first. It is impossible to rank condis in a way that would apply to all situations. It would also make covering condis pointless and would just encourage mindless spamming (of both condis and cleanses) even more. In case that’s possible …
Aside from this, a general nerf to condis is not neccessary, since only a few condi builds are really strong, and it is even questionable, whether those few builds are op compared to certain power builds.

Pretty sire I read somewhere that anet was working on some sort of priority system so the players can choose which to cleanse first (im too lazy to look for the source)

UmbraNoctis.1907:

“Most dangerous” varies from situation to situation. Sometimes you want to cleanse immob, blind, taunt/fear, weakness, bleed, poison, … first. It is impossible to rank condis in a way that would apply to all situations. It would also make covering condis pointless and would just encourage mindless spamming (of both condis and cleanses) even more. In case that’s possible …
Aside from this, a general nerf to condis is not neccessary, since only a few condi builds are really strong, and it is even questionable, whether those few builds are op compared to certain power builds.

While I agree with you, I still think we need a cleansing hierarchy. It won’t be perfect in all situations, but it could be made to work pretty well. For instance, blind will almost never be as dangerous as immobilize or confusion. Vuln will almost never be as dangerous as burn/bleeding since you could still work on dodging/blocking attacks.

I believe a cleansing hierarchy would make the game substantially better. Or, at the very least we do need to start differentiating cleanses into cleansing damaging conditions first vs cleansing control conditions first.

conditions should of being simple debuffs that dont scale with any stat.
the condition damage stat should of never being a thing in gw2 but its too late now,
arena net net bit off more than they could chew.
and tbh no company in the world can manage so many stats , more stats doesnt mean a better game.

Or maybe, it could be easier for people if conditions were health degeneration and not x damage each y seconds.

That can be a good change for conditions. Also would nerf a little the Resistance, that should make you immune to all the Damaging Conditions but not to CC, removing the main problem of that boon that make it seriously OP.

Two kind of condi clean sould be great and will force to a more strategic playstyle.

With a similar change I should be finally able to remove that kitten ed immobilize spammed by druids and be free to dodge they’re burst. or be able to remove weakness. Out of that there’s not so much to worry about, not even condition damage, that actually is limited to only 2 classes and frequently ignored.
We’re in a Direct Damage Meta, after all (with at last some CC Condition)

Also:
“jihm: conditions should of being simple debuffs that dont scale with any stat”
That will be the worst thing to do of all. If you do that then you’ll find berserker builds that spam conditions and kill you with both condition and huge direct damage without any problem of chose what stat they want.
But if you make conditions weak and unable to compete with direct damage (as they’re atm for 7 classes over 9 that chose direct damage instead of condition) you will just delete them from the game without any mercy.

In a similar game who will chose a skill that inflict you 2k of damage over 8 seconds that can be cleaned or reduced to 0 damage so easly? better a defensive skill or a direct damage skill. Now a warrior can inflict 3k/hit just with his AA, there’s no need for condition damage if it’s so weak.

Anyway, what’s that hate to the condition damage? Only 2 classes can use it and all the others do seriously better with direct damage.
If someone kill me at 80% is using direct damage. If someone Burst me at 99% is direct damage.
There’s so few really competitive condition builds and so many condi clean and resistance that not even who can use conditions (as warriors) chose to use that source of damage, using Power instead.

in the end condies work quite well at the moment …. Just accept that condies are one of the two ways to actually kill.
As said we don´t have a condi meta. If we split removal people will complain even more.
They have to choose and if the opt for damage cleanse power builds will destroy them much easier due to soft control and if they opt to cleanse control conditions they will die even more helpless to condies … No need to make it more complicated.
Also if you priorize, then you have to be aware that it might destroy or strengthen builds/condies. Putting burn on prio one would immidiately remove all condie builds that use it as main damage. If vulnerability gets lowest priority i will slaughter all with a power build. This would be one of the worst changes.

For me there are only a few classes i often loose to condies. Mesmer, necro and warrior (but he needs long). Accept that you can´t ignore condies in your builds if you engage one of them.

Silv conditions should not be so powerful if you wanna play a semi afk build you should be penalized.
i can also play condi ranger and fry people like potatoes but its boring as hell.
and if people think conditions are op in pvp wait till you try raiding.
they are actually so much better than direct damage because you dont have to stick on your target spam your skills and start kitting.

in my opinion this is boring gameplay they could easily give some debuffs to the classes that make decent damage and delete the condition damage stat or make it weaker it doesnt to deserve to be the best stat in the game.

Condi =
spam~ spam~ spam > go kitting , no need to care about dodge, hitting, position…… if the target try to clean them, spam~ spam~ fill them up. This is not a pvp….. Boring and make people feel unfair…. condi also is a Newbie Killer.
This things kill the newbie = kill the population and continuous development of the game.
Gw2 PVP going to decline, the condi is one of the important factors.

And gw2 have two condi is very funny. I always think their designers all are the genius!

Torment = you cannot move if no cleaning skill or can’t clean them.
Confusion = you cannot attack or pass any key( excetp WASD and dodge) if no cleaning skill or can’t clean them.
Torment + Confusion = you pass cleaning key or dodge key or just stay in here or call your ele bot to help you clean.
and there are 14 kinds of condi in this game. 14?? what?? Ya,14! Are you crazy!?

Do you think / Do you want a newbie to handle this kitten thing???
Sorry, this is ridiculous.

If i am a newbie/new to try this game, I sure 100% feel this is unfair and unbalance then i will leave the game and kitten it in youtube, Reddit, facebook, twitter…..

Silv.9207:

That can be a good change for conditions. Also would nerf a little the Resistance, that should make you immune to all the Damaging Conditions but not to CC, removing the main problem of that boon that make it seriously OP.

Two kind of condi clean sould be great and will force to a more strategic playstyle.

With a similar change I should be finally able to remove that kitten ed immobilize spammed by druids and be free to dodge they’re burst. or be able to remove weakness. Out of that there’s not so much to worry about, not even condition damage, that actually is limited to only 2 classes and frequently ignored.
We’re in a Direct Damage Meta, after all (with at last some CC Condition)

Also:
“jihm: conditions should of being simple debuffs that dont scale with any stat”
That will be the worst thing to do of all. If you do that then you’ll find berserker builds that spam conditions and kill you with both condition and huge direct damage without any problem of chose what stat they want.
But if you make conditions weak and unable to compete with direct damage (as they’re atm for 7 classes over 9 that chose direct damage instead of condition) you will just delete them from the game without any mercy.

In a similar game who will chose a skill that inflict you 2k of damage over 8 seconds that can be cleaned or reduced to 0 damage so easly? better a defensive skill or a direct damage skill. Now a warrior can inflict 3k/hit just with his AA, there’s no need for condition damage if it’s so weak.

Anyway, what’s that hate to the condition damage? Only 2 classes can use it and all the others do seriously better with direct damage.
If someone kill me at 80% is using direct damage. If someone Burst me at 99% is direct damage.
There’s so few really competitive condition builds and so many condi clean and resistance that not even who can use conditions (as warriors) chose to use that source of damage, using Power instead.

If you saw a newbie who bring 14 stacks Confusion +12 stacks Torment + 8 kind of condi and want to chase and kill a mes, then down in 2 or 3 sec. You will know why people hate the condi. If a game do not have enough population, everything is meaningless.

When playing power i kill much faster and when you talk about newbies…This is a MM issue if you pair beginners with veterans. Playing power and fighting on a point against bronze i can whipe them 1:4 with ele in seconds… Newbies will perish regardless of power or condie and i find it easier and faster with power.

Wolfric.9380:

When playing power i kill much faster and when you talk about newbies…This is a MM issue if you pair beginners with veterans. Playing power and fighting on a point against bronze i can whipe them 1:4 with ele in seconds… Newbies will perish regardless of power or condie and i find it easier and faster with power.

If you playing power kill them.They can see you hit them, they would know how they die and feel fair. But condi isn’t. Pass attack then die? move then die? 14stack burning in sec then die? those are their feeling and thinking.
Player come to play , don’t come to learn.

Newbyes can be harmless against conditions, that’s true. But the same can be against direct damage.
Is frustrating die against tons of conditions but is also frustrating fight a thief and be killed in literally 3 seconds by backstab+AA. Every thief can kill easy a newbye just with a single backstab followed by not a single skill, only AA.
Or be bursted by a guardian! Teleport>trap>LB Knockback>Pull> dead. A newbye is totally unable to counter a combo that make problems to experienced players and can kill you in few seconds.
Personally that make me angry more than be killed by conditions.

I know perfectly why people hate so much conditions but the problem is that almost everything you can tell about conditions are wrong.
1) you need to use different skills to stack conditions, you can’t stack tons of condis with a single skill (still if you can think different), still if you can inflict Different conditions with a single skill.
2) if you stop to hit the enemy will feel your initial damage but then your damage will be 0.
3) Mesmer is the Only condition build able to use a hit-n-hide condition playstyle, all the other classes need to be in front of the enemy or at line of sight to hit and kill him
4) Conditions Can kill You as the same way direct damage can do. Just know that and live happy
5) The only real strong condition build is Mesmer condi, all the others are subpar builds that die mercyless if face the direct damage build of they’re class. (unless maybe for the necromancer, but if you die against a necromancer in 1v1 is totally a Huge L2P issue)
6) Condition damage grant Build Diversity and grant more than a single way to play this game
7) Nerf conditions will remove them from the game, making you play with only one build for the rest of your life: the best direct damage build will be the only one you’ll be able to play. (who want to play with a useless damage source that inflict lesser damage than direct damage? Only a fool will chose it, removing conditions from the game)
8) there’s 14 different conditions but only 5 can inflict damage (6 if you still think there’s necromancers using the trait to inflict damage with fear, that is totally useless atm)
9) Also direct damage builds use conditions. (yeah, a seriously mindblowing thing, don’t you think?) Blind, Vulneravility, Immobilize, Cripple, Taunt, Weakness, that’s the best conditions for direct damage. And a large amount of builds use them to win. And they use tons of them, making you think that that damagingless conditions are killing you, while you’re bursted down by direct damage.
10) you’re all complaining about Mesmer, the only class that really can play condition damage. Then may be that the problem is not condiiton damage but Mesmers?
11) is hard to find more than one condition build x team in a match, really hard. Then you’re telling me that the bigger problem is that single one and not all the others? Why there’s so much direct damage builds if conditions and mesmers are sos trong?

newbyes will die anyway and will be brutally bursted by every direct damage build in this game.

Dion’t tell that is conditions the problem of this game when there’s only one class that can really play with conditions.
That’s only an excuse because you don’t like to die against a single class able to use conditions and few bad builds that try to use them.

I know it´s overhelming to watch the condi bar. I also had to learn it …. When i run i usually have the damage log visible. But mostly to see what i do … Unless its a chronomancer or condi necro, a power build is much more dangerous then any condi “Spam”. There are three main condi things you have to watch out.
1.) Burning, especially when fighting a guard/dragonhunter. But it´s easy to clean if you don´t waste cleanses random. When meetign a guard i always look if he aplies burn. If yes i have to time cleanses and not protection.
2.) Confusion from mesmer. Sometimes you can get hit by huge stacks. If you react wrong with skill use you are dead. Most deadly class for me because he applies condies constantly and you need good condi defence to duel that. Yes i loose often to this condie king. It´s the only condi class i realy loose hard if hes good.
3.) Necro condi bomb + corrupt. Time your cleanses right or die…. Killer class in teamfights for me. You often have to avoid being hit and not rely on cleanse here … Like power.

condi thief, druid trapper, warrior and torment heavy revenant are also dangerous but much less of an issue. After 2 years they all (ok warrior is but slow and his defence is the reason) are no issue annymore …

This tells me it´s hugely a L2P issue and psycologic. I have to agree that some can´t stand this. You have to learn to watch the condi bar and use skills. Against power you are hit and it´s over. So basically fighting condies is a second step after learning to avoid being hit, learn to cleanse if you got hit. You are right, the acceptance of beiing instantly blown is often higher then dying after a few seconds to condies …. I played CS in the past and there you are often dead from a single shot.. and it´s part of shooter games and seems fine…

condi’s are fine if u give condi cleanses the ability to priortize the most damaging conditions u heavily nerf condi builds which have only 1 or 2 actual damage condis or condi where most damage comes from. u also risk buffing power builds that stack vulnerability or annoying lockdown builds with lots of soft cc and boom all of a sudden u are completely shutdown. there is no condi meta in pvp maby at the beginning of heart of thorns maby. but since pvp season 4 power builds have Always dominated and vastly outnumber the condi builds 2:1 roughly speaking. People are possibly now testing condis due to arcane power to ele and other buffs to certain classes here and there. give it some time and u will see that the meta will stay powerbased for the most of it.

1 – Make conditions work like gw1, players needed to know know how and have more team effort.

2 – bring back hexes… make some conditions to be hexes.

3 – Make the game being more single target instead of cleave/aoe spam

4 – Make aoe boons affect party members only.

Main Damaging Conditions for classes:
-Guardian: Burn
-Revenant: Torment, Confusion and Burn
-Warrior: Confusion, Bleed and Burn
-Ranger: Bleed, Poison and Burn
-Engineer: Bleed, Poison, Confusion and Burn (using the Flamethrower)
-Thief: Bleed, Torment and Poison
-Mesmer: Torment and Confusion (with some casual weak Burn or Bleed from the Staff skill and phantasms)
-Elementalist: Burn and Bleed
-Necromancer: Bleed, Poison and Torment (with few Burn if use the trait for the Shroud AA and some random conditions corrupting boons, more or less always not damaging conditions anyway)

1 Class have only 1 condition, 2 have 2 condition, 5 with 3 conditions and 1 with 4 conditions.
The necromancer can inflict so low amunt of Burn that i don’t even counted it as a real source of damage for it.

More or less the classes have 3 conditions to inflict damage but can’t spam all the 3 conditions all the time, they use mainly 2, with the third sometimes to increase the dps making a sort of “burst” on the enemy.

@Aeolus, what do you mean by “4 – Make aoe boons affect party members only”?
If you active a boon AoE in sPvP only your team will obtain the Boon, the enemy will not obtain any kind of boon from you. At last, is an ally actibe a boon the boon isapplied to the nearest allies and minions can “steal” your boon if the target limit is 5 and there’s different minions near the caster. Not any enemy player will obtain your boons.

About the “more single target” I can be ok with that, but actually a large amount of classes and builds focus on single target burst and not on AoE. In the games I played recently I seen only DH spam traps or Necro active the RS skills. Maybe the war Lb, but I don’t find any condi warrior out there, then there’s not even that kind of AoE.
Eles can use AoE but they’re actually more support-like than dps, still if they’re skills are strong (Mender still have high power and good Precision, granting them a good Direct damage).
If you talk about Condition AoE skills there’s only few AoE in this game that are condition (maybe only the necromancer can inflict real AoE condition damage with his Shroud combo, the damage from an ele Burn is more or less 0 because they don’t use condition amulets).

I think 3 damaging conditions per build is too high honestly. I’d rather see more stuff like burn guard for condi builds, where it focuses heavily on 1, or 2, conditions. It can apply that condition from a lot of different skills/traits, to cover up the inherent weakness in having your source of damage be easy to cleanse.

Silv.9207, limiting condis to classes would be intresting imo, by forth i ment some skills should only work to players that are actually in your party, but i guess boon priorities already do that on wvw, on pvp yeah your team mates get the stuff.

Burning, Bleeding, Torment, Confusion, Poison:

Values used are examples as to show the mechanic not what exponential (formulas) values should be.

I suggest limiting each class ACCESS to a:
Max of 2 types of damaging conditions (Bleed, Burn, Poison, Torment, Confusion)
*Max of 2 types of crowd control conditions (Chill, Slow, Cripple)
Max of 1 type of hard crowd control conditions (Fear, Taunt, Immobilize, Stun/Daze)
*Max of 2 types of Utility conditions. (Vulnerability, Blind, Weakness)

Reduce the current avg instance of Conditions by 70-75%
*Hard cap the duration of all conditions to no more than 10 seconds across the board for all classes.
Use Exponential and situational damage curves.
*Remove ticking characteristic of Conditions. No free damage.

EXAMPLES:

Bleeding: Should be the only condition that does sustained damage by default..
Can stack in Intensity and Duration. No Damage curve. 1:1.

Burning: Should damage on exponential curves.
Can only stack in Duration.
Damage increases as long as it is applied to an enemy from any source.
If cleansed or ends duration Damage modifier resets.
2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, (cleansed) 2, 4, 8, 16 etc.

Torment: Should ONLY damage when moving.
Can only stack in duration.
Damages on an exponential curve as long as player is moving. When player stops damage modifier resets.
(player moving) 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, (player stops moving) 0, 0, 0, (player moves again) 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.

Confusion: Should ONLY damage when activating/Chaneling skills.
Stacks in both Intensity and Duration.
Does not do sustained damage.
Damage is directly dependent upon the exact number of stacks currently applied.
Stacks apply potential damage on an exponential curve.
(Player attacks with no stacks of confusion) 0 damage
(Player attacks with 5 stacks) 32 Damage
(Player with 12 stacks) 4096 Damage
(8 stacks lose their duration and 4 are left) 16 Damage.

Poison: Does not deliver sustained damage.
Stacks in Duration and intensity and is hard capped at maximum stacks.
Only reduces the the effectiveness of healing.
Healing reduction is not on an exponential curve.
Healing Reduction is exactly dependent on the number of stacks of poison present at the time of skill use.
1 stack is equal to 5% healing reduction.
2 = 10% (Heal was 10% less effective)
3 = 15%
4 = 20%( Heal was 20% less effective)
10 = 50%
20 = 100% (Cap: Heal provides no health)

This is in my mind how conditions should work.
Based on the situation do they apply damage not…oh well since you have it on you take damage for no reason at all.