Guild Wars 2

Preface: I main necromancer and thief.

I think the current problem in GW2 at the moment is the power creep that has injected into the game ever since the specializations patch (more stats, more traits) and HoT (elite specializations). Conditions that might not have been as powerful before, like chill, have become much more powerful because of its ease of application and uptime. The same goes for powerful boons such as protection, stability, and resistance. Arenanet seems to have a super-charging approach to balance; solving one OP solution by providing another OP solution. I’m looking at you, boon corruption.

The issue is, this method of problem solving is that it soon becomes some what of a baseline requirement, for any mode of play. If a certain elementalist can achieve 100% uptime on protection, we simply cannot do without it. I think there are two sides to this argument. If meta revolves around people doing the same exact things because such and such aspect has become a baseline requirement, we are watching players duke it out in pvp relying on almost mechanical skill alone. But on the other hand, I think this really reduces build options and locks out entire classes.

My suggestion is, lets take a step back. Lets take a big step back. Lets bring it back to the days when activating protection just before an eviscerate was a clutch move. What I’m suggesting is a complete rework of conditions, and boons. Maybe even combos.

The basics:
Conditions and boons from a single player cannot stack in intensity, i.e. you can only inflict one stack burning by yourself. Your teammate will be able to inflict a second stack. Conditions will require a rework, such that they have more counterplay associated with them.

For instance:
Bleeding: Moderate damage scaling, also reduces endurance regeneration, low base duration.
Poison: Low damage scaling, reduces healing, high base duration.
Burning: High damage scaling, high base duration, removed upon dodge rolling.

So just comparing these 3 reworked conditions, theres a specific element of counterplay associated with them. Class skills will need to be reworked so that you can’t freely apply conditions at will. .’. there will be a more important timing associated with when you apply conditions.

e.g. do you burn an opponent when he has no endurance left, or do you do it so they might waste a dodge to get rid of the burn? The opponent getting burned might then think, do I dodge now to get rid of the burn, or do I dodge later to both evade a powerful attack and remove the burn.

Some other reworks include:
Weakness: Enemy has a % reduced chance to crit. Scales with toughness.
Vulnerability: Intensity % scales with precision, also prevents going into stealth. ‘Revealed’ is removed.

Reworked boons for example:
Vigor: Increased endurance regeneration, removes bleeding on application. Scales with vitality.
Protection: Intensity % scales with toughness, removes vulnerability on application.
*

There’d be a cap for some of these things so that a team of 5 in PvP cannot walk around with 100% reduced damage from protection etc etc.

If this sounds a bit like Guild Wars 1 (no stacked intensity) well, yes, it does. Condition removal will become more specific. Bandage for instance might only remove bleeding. Conditions and boon mechanics will become more specific in general.

So this will require a rework of almost every skill in the game. Certainly conditions and boons cannot be applied on every auto attack. But there is one aspect of the game this rework can be directed to: combos.

If all classes had a higher access to different combo fields and finishers, and this is where most boons and condition are applied from. Combat will involve a lot more counterplay and mind games. Players will see combo fields being laid down as a byproduct of an attack, and will need to think whether the enemy will leap through the field to inflict vulnerability, or blast the field to inflict cripple.

/Discuss?

No just no condi builds wouldnt be viable nor would applying boons to yourslef stabilty would be even more impossible to maintain and cc meta would come out of it

Why wouldn’t they be viable. A condition build would focus on traits that created more combo fields that apply conditions when combo’ed with. You’d have to work for your conditions, yes, but they’d be powerful if not dealt with. And how is maintaining stability a ‘good’ thing. Currently it just locks half the classes out of CC and soon it will make necromancers some sort of silly required countermeasure.

“Burning: High damage scaling, high base duration, removed upon dodge rolling.”

Read this then realised u main thief, a coincidence im sure…….

You mean a coincidence that every other class can dodge roll as well?

The problem statement is spot-on.

I don’t particularly care for your solution. I think it’s a bit too extreme compared to just reducing access to some conditions and boons.

Listen combo fields are fine and dandy lets take a look at them.
Thief has poison and whatever the pistol 5 field is called
Mesmer has etheral
Warrior has fire
Engie has light lightning fire blinding field and i might have missed one
Ele has frost water fire lightning
Necro has dark
Rev has pretty much only mallyx skills to combo with
Ranger has only water and fire i believe aside from pet skills
Guard has light and fire

Engi and ele would be your best choice as the bring the most fields to the table while being able to keep themselves alive (in the current meta) pretty decently mesmer would be pretty much useless as the boons gained by their chaos armor don’t offset the dmg they take ( mes only has leap as a finisher) I could go on and on but there is just way too much imbalance between classes with lots of fields and the classes that excel at finishing those fields.

Boons would go back to where stab was only one stack and only duration mattered necro’s would be needed to counter said OP boons(they have to be strong to offset for the tanky amulets removal and to make them viable as you could only give yourslef one stack of might while duration does increase on them.

And to come back to your point about a necro being required on a team to help with cc come from as engi’s and ele’s can do a way better job of ccing enemy’s heck even thiefs and mesmers have more cc pressure then a necro

No, the necromancer will be needed for corrupting the stability, if stability uptime became a thing, is what I meant earlier. Combos are such a unique feature to this game, but in its current state a lot of combos are useless, and not entirely integral.

I don’t quite like your reworked condi/boons idea, but I do agree very much that condis and boon were in a way better and healthier state pre june 23rd.
They will never revert back to this though, that would be admitting that the condi rework was a mistake, and even a company like riot who’s really communicating with its community and listening to feedback almost never does this.