Guild Wars 2

The current state of PvP is really really really unrewarding and a huge clustertruck.

What happened? Before Pre-Hot this game was decent. There were roles, viable builds that didnt just mean trying to min/max damage. If you wanted to get roughed up and be able to take on 2-3 players, it revolved around your set up and skill as well as completely outplaying your opponent. Now it just depends on what class your playing that decides if you can 2-3 for a small amount of time. Or if you win 1v1 engagements.

Precision is currently out of control in this state of game. The pace is faster, which is ok. But the amount of damage you take is what is triggering me. There are classes that can stack numbers upon numbers on your screen of high damage in half a second, most of these are just criticals. As if its more rare for them to hit you with a non critical attack. Tuning down critical chance seems like it has to be a must to make this game less chaotic in pvp and more reaction based because it will extend the duration of fights which offers more chance for rewarding decisions instead of being confused as to why 20k hp has instantly been pushed down into 3k.

Damage Modifiers, get rid of them. It’s as easy as that.

Conditions. These are currently broken as they are. Application to cleanse ratio is tipped in a very unreasonable way across all classes. A fix for this could be to lower application pressure but upping the damage per tick on damaging conditions per class. Although Some classes are ok when it comes to condition pressure as they do not deal much damage outside of their conditions alone.

Teleports. As it is now, players can cross a distance of up to atleast 2000 yards with ease as well as going through terrain to get to a player. Feeling as though halving the range on these teleports is needed as well are requiring a path, one similar to obstruction in order to teleport.

Added bugs im experiencing with this game. When a thief steals me, im instantly getting hit before the thief has even moved on my screen and hasnt even unstealthed yet. Can we please get a fix for this. Getting backstabbed/attacked before the thief has moved.

Instant cast. These should hold the least powerful effects in pvp. Having a noticeable animation is what powerful effects should have. The longer the stronger, the quicker the weaker. This is how the design for pvp should be.

Class Design. Now please, dont be biased if this pertains to your class, but. If you have mass amounts of sustain, evades, damage negation, invulnerability. Anything that makes it so you have a small window of opportunity to be attacked. You should not, in anyway, be dealing mass amounts of damage with your build. When it came to bunkers, they were not efficient in killing, but instead could take a hit. What I am noticing is that classes with bunker designs are doing the complete opposite and doing as much damage as the amt of sustains they have.

Crowd Control. Completely out of control. There is just to much in this game in the form of Soft CC and Hard CC and the amount of time it takes for one to be reused. Please, fix this issue. Add in this amazing thing called “diminishing return”. Lower the duration on CC as well. 2 seconds untraited in protection against Hard CC is enough. Soft CC could be solved with diminishing returns.

Basically agreed with everything yeah. Doesn’t happen often. Although pre-HoT, some stuff was wrong as well.

I would like to point out that quite few things (dmg modifiers, ports, high crits) you complain about existed basically since launch.

I know they have. But it was fine since the pace of this game was slower. Meaning it was counterable and didnt result in immediate burst down of hp or being hit by a truck full of conditions (Even though mesmers could and still can). The game was ions more balanced in its previous state then in its current state minus unkillable bunkers. Which this game should not encourage but not have completely removed the bunker role from the game.

I have a feeling you never played before HoT. Or forgot that things like medi guards, signet thief, zerk war etc.

High crits and damage mods are a good thing imo becaue it forces investment from the player (Ex. Do they take the extra 5% damage or do they take a defense against cc passive?). It forces people to make choices for their build. I think the problem is base damage is too high so the mods get absolutely ridiculous when they get stacked. There also aren’t any counter pick traits (By that I mean they don’t do a good job of putting damage traits next to defensive sustain traits so that you have to choose one or the other, most of them are on minor traits which means everyone gets them). For crits, it’s a stat investment. You want to be able to consistently deal high damage? You gotta crit. Crit was supposed to be the stat that differed the spikers from the bruisers. Bruisers may have had at most 30% so they wouldn’t crit very often and their damage had to come from flat power whereas the spikers often had anywhere between 50 and 65% chance so you had to rely on them to get off the damage needed to fully take down a target.. This goes back to base damage being too high, if it wasn’t so present we wouldn’t have to worry about insane crits.

With ports I disagree on halving the range because that’s not only an essential part of the mobility of the classes using them, it’s necessary for them to be able to have a meaningful engage or disengage. if people can’t safely port out of aoe or out of range from someone who’s really sticking to you then there’s really no reason for ports to exist. Also, all the ports that are 1200 range (minus steal) have cds of at least 40 seconds and also serve as stunbreakers, condi clears, etc. Keep that in mind when suggesting the range nerf.

Pretty much everything else I say amen to. I think you have solid arguments and solutions. I also agree that they are problems.

Potential damage and sustain go hand in hand.

Generally, you need to have more sustain if players can also potentially one-shot you. HoT introduced statistics like Maurader, new stronger cleanse, enhanced blocking and evasion abilities, and better healing to compensate for increases in damage potential. The need for more damage arose because people wanted faster kill times in both PvP and PvE.

In PvE the desire came out of trying to make “harder” fights where defense mattered because the creature could kill you without a substantial increase in defensive ability. Damage and CC also increased for similar reasons.

In PvP the goal was to make fights more interesting by speeding them up. People often associate quick kills with fun and skill. The builds that could burst, yet also use the newly buffed defenses properly, became part of the burst-invuln meta where it was possible to have the best of both worlds (massive offense potential and incredible defensive potential).

If Anet nerfs damage AND defenses it will reduce the potential for a build to be both damage burst and defensive juggernauts. That’s why this patch was a first good step in that direction. Trust is low they will keep moving in that direction. It is up to Anet to keep using nerfs to bring everything back towards a balanced trade-off (damage for defense and vis versa).

Its cool that youd like to list off meta builds. But there meta for a reason. they use the most broken set up for a class, which we still have to this day, but 2x as worse since theres no counter against these new builds. You cant outlive the burst unless your a specific class with loads of sustain, and thats where another issue comes from, classes that have to much sustain with a lot of pressure.

Medi guardian was one of them. As they could burst with a good amount of sustain. I honestly dont remember signet thieves since they always played the same, high damage with ports like all other power thieves. Zerk Warrior was always a broken design, because they had high sustain + damage mitigation, with high damage.

Basicly, you think that the entire game is out of control and ANet need to nerf everithing.
Movement skills are not ok, damage modifiers are not ok, precision are not okm condition damage is not ok, CC are not ok and classes/builds needs a total rework…

1) Precision is what make this game fast and reacting. You NEED to react fast or you’ll die. If you reduce/remove precision you’ll obtain a slow game where no one need to be fast because the damage will kill you slowly. You argumentation is against you….

2)Damage Modieers exist since launch and they’re not a so huge problem and grant not so much damage. The only class that can really stack damage modifier is the elementalist and is the support class of this meta…

3) Condition is Supposed to be able to inflict damage. If the enemy can clean all your conditions you’ll not be able to inflict any damage. You can do faster removing them from the game.
Also, 8 classes over 9 (maybe 7/9 because the revenant now is strong) use direct damage because conditions are too easy countered, expecially in team fights. That will mean something…

4) Teleports can be a pain and the thief can abuse of them. But increase a little the cost of teleport and all will be ok. There’s a large amount of movement skills in this game and they can make the difference in a lot of fights but not always. For shure they’re useful.
For that reason there’s classes that have a lot of them and classes that don’t have any or only few (or any good, as the necromancer).

5) it already is…

6) CC tes they’re a little too much, expecially for some classes like warrior or ranger, but with a good timing and reaction you can evade/block/clean/…. your enemy stun/immobilize/…. and be free. There’s some builds that focus on lock you down but they inflict lesser damage than the others. Frequently is a build choice.

7) Class design…
yes, some classes have too much defensive and offensive abilities. There’s not so much to do. In this game you can chose all the skills you want and all the traits combination you need to make you unkillable and still be able to inflict huge damage. in that game you’ll never be able to stop that and is not so necessary. In pve you need ojnly to burst, in www to run, AoE and survive, in sPvP to survive and Burst. Till you’ll be able to do that you’re the king of the hill.
But ANet did a lot of nerfs in the survavibility of different classes, as the endure pain for the warriors that now last for 2 seconds and have shorter CD. That will grant them lesser invulnerability to the main damage of this game and will make them die easier and faster, still making them able to Cc and burst you as before.

ANet did a lot of reworks since the HoT launch and they did really good things. Expecially if you think how hard is balance a game that on the paper is totally impossible to balance.
You don’t have a single class to rework, you have a “mass of classes” to rework for every single one. You have to rework every traitline, every skill, every weapon focusing to the point that every class can do everything. is the core of this game mechanic and his pain. You can be a bunker, direct damage dps (able to inflict burst damage or to inflictdamage for longer time), condition damage dps(able to inflict burst damage ordamage for longer time), hybrid, hybrid bunker, healer, supporter (with boons, CC, debuff). And in sPvP there’s even more roles as the decapper, the holder and the burst.
And all that on every single class.

There’s so much things to look that is totally impossible to make a balance of everything.
That’s the reason that made ANet make the Elite Specializzations, to make a stop into that chaos. And they did it but it’s still impossible to balance because there’s still too many possible builds to do that make every class unbalanced by itself.

Ario.8964:

High crits and damage mods are a good thing imo becaue it forces investment from the player (Ex. Do they take the extra 5% damage or do they take a defense against cc passive?). It forces people to make choices for their build. I think the problem is base damage is too high so the mods get absolutely ridiculous when they get stacked. There also aren’t any counter pick traits (By that I mean they don’t do a good job of putting damage traits next to defensive sustain traits so that you have to choose one or the other, most of them are on minor traits which means everyone gets them). For crits, it’s a stat investment. You want to be able to consistently deal high damage? You gotta crit. Crit was supposed to be the stat that differed the spikers from the bruisers. Bruisers may have had at most 30% so they wouldn’t crit very often and their damage had to come from flat power whereas the spikers often had anywhere between 50 and 65% chance so you had to rely on them to get off the damage needed to fully take down a target.. This goes back to base damage being too high, if it wasn’t so present we wouldn’t have to worry about insane crits.

With ports I disagree on halving the range because that’s not only an essential part of the mobility of the classes using them, it’s necessary for them to be able to have a meaningful engage or disengage. if people can’t safely port out of aoe or out of range from someone who’s really sticking to you then there’s really no reason for ports to exist. Also, all the ports that are 1200 range (minus steal) have cds of at least 40 seconds and also serve as stunbreakers, condi clears, etc. Keep that in mind when suggesting the range nerf.

Pretty much everything else I say amen to. I think you have solid arguments and solutions. I also agree that they are problems.

Good points, and your absolutely right about trait management. It sucks having to look at dead traits that will never in any situation win over a must pick. I wanted suggest the Power/Support/Defence tree idea for having to pick and choose between the sustain or the damage or etc. but i couldnt even design that out in my head to add it to the list.

Regarding the crits, although theres times where I bring up my combat log and notice that i haven’t been getting non critted for a while you have a point. Base damage is a bit to high and I still cant get behind modifiers being ok, when I look at some that are giving 20% damage increase at specific hp percentages and it takes less then a second to get a players hp that low at times.

With ports, maybe halving the range was a stretch, but im seeing them used more as engagers then disengagers. I can understand of having the need for gap closers but some come with undodgeable CC, unless your lucky enough to anticipate an instant cast and dodge especially when there coming through the wall or any other obstacle.
Things like thief shortbow, ele teleport, mesmer phase retreat are fine with there current range and I didnt mean to change those.

saerni.2584:

Potential damage and sustain go hand in hand.

Generally, you need to have more sustain if players can also potentially one-shot you. HoT introduced statistics like Maurader, new stronger cleanse, enhanced blocking and evasion abilities, and better healing to compensate for increases in damage potential. The need for more damage arose because people wanted faster kill times in both PvP and PvE.

In PvE the desire came out of trying to make “harder” fights where defense mattered because the creature could kill you without a substantial increase in defensive ability. Damage and CC also increased for similar reasons.

In PvP the goal was to make fights more interesting by speeding them up. People often associate quick kills with fun and skill. The builds that could burst, yet also use the newly buffed defenses properly, became part of the burst-invuln meta where it was possible to have the best of both worlds (massive offense potential and incredible defensive potential).

If Anet nerfs damage AND defenses it will reduce the potential for a build to be both damage burst and defensive juggernauts. That’s why this patch was a first good step in that direction. Trust is low they will keep moving in that direction. It is up to Anet to keep using nerfs to bring everything back towards a balanced trade-off (damage for defense and vis versa).

Very much agreed. Although I really wish they didnt speed up combat to this point. I like to register whats going on in battle to let me know that my choices for what I do will matter in combat, besides having to spam all my osht buttons.

Silv.9207:

Had to snip, was more then 5000.

Entire game? No just pvp since thats all i play. I cant speak for PvE or WvW.

Movement skills are fine, my issue is with how teleports behave in this game’s pvp, through terrain and with soft CC. It far surpasses any gap closer that isnt a teleport because it has no consequence and is full of reward.

Im against damage modifiers in this current state of the game because they arent needed with the current pace. We need lower damage at the moment to bring the PvP to a more rewarding pace instead of whoever burst more while using sustain wins.

Precision, in my opinion should put you as close to having a chance to crit, but not making it so you crit each and every time.

Condition damage is definitely not ok with how it is now as application is just to high for how much damage conditions do. Higher application pressure should mean you need high stacks in order to do amazing condi damage. This is not the case as just having multiple conditions on a foe drains them down within seconds with low amounts of cleanse. Conditions are also only countered by cleanse. But power is countered by evades, invulns, weakness, blinds.

Balancing a game is quite difficult, but a lot of the changes anet has made are very questionable. This patch was a step in the right direction, but it also did completely nothing for a class like engineer who already has nothing outside of scrapper. (I dont main engi, even though its my fav class)

Also condition is countered by evade, block, blind, and also Resistance. And a large amount of traits, ten times the traits that protect from direct damage.
If you can’t hit the enemy you can’t stack conditions, if the enemy block your burst you can’t inflict any damage. The only difference is that you will see the absence of that damage few seconds after the burst.
Condition is the most countered source of damage of the entire game.

Silv.9207:

Also condition is countered by evade, block, blind, and also Resistance. And a large amount of traits, ten times the traits that protect from direct damage.
If you can’t hit the enemy you can’t stack conditions, if the enemy block your burst you can’t inflict any damage. The only difference is that you will see the absence of that damage few seconds after the burst.
Condition is the most countered source of damage of the entire game.

Really? Conditions aren’t affected by Frost Aura, Rite of the Great Dwarf, Bulwark gyro, Protection, Toughness/Armor,

They Tick through all invulns, ticks while players are blocking, a good portion of Condi applying skills are unblockable.

Direct damage is Reduced by Protection, Frost Aura, Rite of the Great Dwarf, Bulwark Gyro, Protection, Toughness/Armor. (All of Which can Stack in effectiveness) Weakness. Multiple traits and Runes that that root juice direct iMessage by percentage

Countered by Dodges, Blocks, Invulns, Blind.

Lots of Traits passively apply any number of these.

Why everyone still think that block/evade/dodge/blind?
If you can’t hit you can’t stack conditions. Block a Torch skill of the guardian is like block the LB 2 of the dragonhunter, there’s not so much difference.
If you say that even while you block/evade/blind you feel the effects of the already stacked conditions, that’s another story. Conditions tick still while you block, but to prevent them you have to block the hits before you feel the pain of so much stacked conditions. And anyway if you block/evade a Necromancer RS5+RS4 combo you evade all his condition burst, the same if you dodge a mesmer F2 attack, you will evade his damage and the future damage of the stack he was not able to inflict to you.
There’s really no difference in terms of how much damage you can block/evade/xxxxx, the only difference is that conditions inflict damage over time instead of when they hit.

Then, to speak about things that reduce condition damage:
- 63 weapon skills/utility/heal/elite that remove/convert/transfer conditions
-34 traits that clean/convert/transfer conditions
-I have to look how many rune/sigil clean conditions but there’s different of them

AND there’s also the Total Immunity to condition Boon: Resistance. That just make all your stacks useless and reduce to 0 your damage. Only 2 classes have it but a warrior and a revenant can counter any condition build in this game (still if the mallyx revenant is harder to play, but had get a buff and now is viable)

Also, talking of sPvP, how much Toughness do you see in play? Seriously: how many builds use amulets with toughness? Maybe few paladin builds, but there’s only few of them, all the others use Vitality. Then there’s not the problem of toughness because no one have it. It’s one of the reasons direct damage is better than condition damage: there’s lesser defences to it.
There’s also lesser Protection in this game, season by season, with even more boon remover/corruption (expecially now with the mallyx revenant and the thief spammer that convert/steal boons).
Frost aura can be obtained only through a elementalist and there’s only few of them today. maybe when the season start we’ll more of them in game, but actually there’s only few of them.
About Rite of the Great Dwarf i had to look on the wiky to remember what is it and you’ll Never see that skill in sPvP just because no one use the dwarf legend, as no one use the centaur legend. They’re useless in sPvP, unless you play a really specific role and playstyle in a well organized team that can support you. But ehy, now there’s only the solo/duoQueue and no one can risk so much only to play a single skill that last for 5 seconds and consume all your energy, making you useless.
but yes, I also put in different skills no one use, then it’s a fair play.
The bulkward gyro is really good, nothing to say.

And one of the things that make the real difference between direct and condition damage reductions is that reductions to power damage only Reduce it but condi clean/convert/transfer skills totally Stop or Negate the condition damage.
If you hit an enemy that have protection you know that the damage is reduced by 33% but if you make your burst and the enemy active a condi clean (for example the druid enter the celestial avatar form) your damage is reduced up to 90% of it’s full potential.
Also, your mentioned reductions stack but one by one, if you have frost aura and protection you will not protect you by 43% of the damage, you will reduce the damage by 33% and then by 10%, obtaining a reduction of 39%. I don’t know what of them reduce the damage first, but that’s more or less how they work.

About unblockable condition skills, I know only the necromancer staff and it’s everything other than dangerous. maybe only the skill 4 if the necro have conditions to transfer, but in this meta there’s not enough conditions to transfer to obtain a good damage.

I fear the Direct damage unblockable skills, and there’s a good amount of them. And also skills to make your skills unblockable (as the signet of the warrior, that have a low cd and 5 sec of duration, more than enough to burst a DH 100-0 with a good stun lock-dps combo)

Be shure that there’s seriously more ways to protect yourself from Conditions than from Direct damage and that Direct damage grant you a better and (more important) Faster damage.

Condition damage is strong but there’s so many ways to counter it that only 1 class over 9 use it (maybe 2 with the new revenant), at last at medium/high level.

Have been saying that damage is out of control for a while now.

This latest patch has not done anything to bring things back to reasonable levels, if anything, quite the oposite.

Silv.9207:

Why everyone still think that block/evade/dodge/blind?
If you can’t hit you can’t stack conditions. Block a Torch skill of the guardian is like block the LB 2 of the dragonhunter, there’s not so much difference.
If you say that even while you block/evade/blind you feel the effects of the already stacked conditions, that’s another story. Conditions tick still while you block, but to prevent them you have to block the hits before you feel the pain of so much stacked conditions. And anyway if you block/evade a Necromancer RS5+RS4 combo you evade all his condition burst, the same if you dodge a mesmer F2 attack, you will evade his damage and the future damage of the stack he was not able to inflict to you.
There’s really no difference in terms of how much damage you can block/evade/xxxxx, the only difference is that conditions inflict damage over time instead of when they hit.

Then, to speak about things that reduce condition damage:
- 63 weapon skills/utility/heal/elite that remove/convert/transfer conditions
-34 traits that clean/convert/transfer conditions
-I have to look how many rune/sigil clean conditions but there’s different of them

AND there’s also the Total Immunity to condition Boon: Resistance. That just make all your stacks useless and reduce to 0 your damage. Only 2 classes have it but a warrior and a revenant can counter any condition build in this game (still if the mallyx revenant is harder to play, but had get a buff and now is viable)

Snip word count

And one of the things that make the real difference between direct and condition damage reductions is that reductions to power damage only Reduce it but condi clean/convert/transfer skills totally Stop or Negate the condition damage.
If you hit an enemy that have protection you know that the damage is reduced by 33% but if you make your burst and the enemy active a condi clean (for example the druid enter the celestial avatar form) your damage is reduced up to 90% of it’s full potential.
Also, your mentioned reductions stack but one by one, if you have frost aura and protection you will not protect you by 43% of the damage, you will reduce the damage by 33% and then by 10%, obtaining a reduction of 39%. I don’t know what of them reduce the damage first, but that’s more or less how they work.

About unblockable condition skills, I know only the necromancer staff and it’s everything other than dangerous. maybe only the skill 4 if the necro have conditions to transfer, but in this meta there’s not enough conditions to transfer to obtain a good damage.

I fear the Direct damage unblockable skills, and there’s a good amount of them. And also skills to make your skills unblockable (as the signet of the warrior, that have a low cd and 5 sec of duration, more than enough to burst a DH 100-0 with a good stun lock-dps combo)

Be shure that there’s seriously more ways to protect yourself from Conditions than from Direct damage and that Direct damage grant you a better and (more important) Faster damage.

Condition damage is strong but there’s so many ways to counter it that only 1 class over 9 use it (maybe 2 with the new revenant), at last at medium/high level.

Really no direct damage is reduced to zero on more classes?

Again all invulns Block every source of Direct damage same with pseudo invulns, while Condis still Tick

Let’s look at just a few skills that completely negate power but Condis still damage through.
Obsidian Flesh, Mist Form, Endure Pain, Defy Pain, Renewed Focus, Elixir S, Stone Signet.

Resistance can be stripped or corrupted non of the above can, yet Condis still tick tick tick away.

Unblockable Condis, let’s see Necro Staff, Nothing Can Save you, Dark Path, Epidemic, Corrosive Poison Cloud, Corrupt Boon(which removes Resistance), Thief Choking Gas, Dragon hunter Spear of Justice, Viper’s nest, Spike Trap, Flame Trap, Caltrops, Needle Trap, Banish enchantment, Spectral Wall, Box of Nails. Just to name a few. But yeah only Necromancer staff applies unblockable Condies….

Also you math on the Damage Reduction stacking is way off. See bolded

They are multiplicative so 33% is turned into 1.33 and 10% is 1.1, now the magic, 1.33*1.1=1.463.

And with enough of those I have seen Backstabs crit for less than 8 damage

And let’s not forget every class has different Armor values and there are no Passive stats that reduce Condi damage. And before Anet removed all the Toughness stat amulets many many people especially Condi users took them, if they still existed they would still take over any other stat in game currently.

Oh I see the problem and it’s not that Condis are weak by any means.

Every single Total-Invulnerability/Block/Evade/Bling make a condition class Unable to stack conditions, making him unable to stack damage. As I told, that will not seen in the immediate, but you’ll see the lack of damage after few seconds.
Conditions when applied inflict low damage but they inflict that damage all over time.
If you block a 4k istant hit you reduce to zero the damage. If you block a 4k condition skill that will inflict that damage over 5 seconds, you always block 4k of damage. there’s no difference!
The difference is that if someone inflict you 20k of direct damage you di in 4 seconds (time to active the skills), if someone stack up 20k of damage you die in 10 seconds (time to make the tick work). That’s because direct damage is way better than condition.

And more or less every skill you mentioned is not used in sPvP since years…(unless necro staff and CPC. Also caltrops, but they’re used only in builds that atm no one use)
Spear of Justice inflict Burn but is you see a condition guardian active it you’ll be shure it’s a TOTAL NooB because he reduce his future condition damage to 0 only to stack few burn, the worst action you can do using a condition class.

About amulets, i will for shure take it, not because they’re better, just because the main source of damage is direct damage and more you protect yourself from it better is for you. by that, is a point in favor of direct damage, not conditions damage. There’s no amulet used with thoughness and that’s a really huge advantage for direct damage, while everyone use vitality, that is a counter for condition damage.

Told you that, i play a necromancer with a Direct Damage build, just because is better than condition damage, I’m shure to inflict all my damage and not be hardly or totally countered by different classes with condi clean or Resistance.
Also, talking of resistance, i can corrupt 3 sec of resistance but there’s other 6 of it. And if I corrupt it after 2 seconds it will tick the next resistance after 1 sec, making me waste my corruption. How many damage immunity skills last so long? 9 second of total immunity from every kind of condition. It’s a lot, don’t you think? And revenant can spam it easy all the time, making my corruptions a waste of time.
And if you tell me that the warrior can active his endure pain and then his shield, i can tell you that the sheld protect also from conditions, just because I can’t inflict any stack on someone that block my skills.

Direct damage is so good that 7/8 classes over 9 chose it instead of condition, still if they can use condition damage.
the warrior can be the master of condition damage and is able to fight with conditions and do burst all the time. But every warrior know that play as direct damage is better because there’s lesser counters and your damage can be reduced but not negated. At last you inflict only 54% of you damage, but not 0%.

Also, are you shure that damage reduction are multiplicative? I doubt…

You doubt lol, I proved you wrong on a lot of things in my last post, you are grasping at straws.

They are multiplicative look up the formulas for damage calculations they tell you how everything is factored in, and when you corrupt the Resistance boon if it isn’t being reapplied you corrupt the whole boon not just 3 seconds of it in your statement of if they have 6 seconds of resistance only 3 seconds is corrupted…

And 3 classes chose Condi the last couple seasons religiously because they were the only classes with actual usable Condi weapons and builds, the rest didn’t have anything that could be used effectively to be considered so wasn’t really an option, and I see quite a few trap Condi Druids, you don’t see them too often though since it essentially plays out as trap DH.

Also when Condis can be stacked fast enough that they Burst some within 1-3 yeah such over time damage smh. All that’s need is to land the Condi Burst which in most cases gets all that stacks on classes relatively fast enough they can react.

And again Condi doesn’t have Passive stats that reduce the effectiveness of its damage on top of Special effects or frost Aura and Boons or Condis that reduce its damage overall outside of resistance(now to use your logic, which is only on two classes, one of which hadn’t been Meta and when it was it never used mallyx in any situation before patch so therefore it effectively didn’t exist, again that’s using your reasoning)

Again the problem is very clear.

I never look to the damage reduction formula (I don’t even know where to look, on the wiki there’s nothing about that) then i have to belive you on that. Ok.

About Resistance I think i was not clear enough, i was talking about the warrior Berserker Stance, to make an example, also because is the main source of Resistance in that game. That skill generate 3 sec of resistance every 3 sec for 3 times and that was my example. If the war active his healing signet he will obtain resistance and if corrupted will not be reapplied, that’s right.
revenant obtained a lot of love and now is playable with Mallyx and someone already say that will replace the necromancer as a boon remover. Then yes, it’s in the game and viable.

The warrior shoud play condition and inflict much more damage than with the direct damage build, also because is the Only class atm really able to burst you with conditions (also because can spam a large amount of them in few seconds and, more important, of different conditions and not only stask up the same one that will be really easy to clean and counter).
Necromancers atm are divided between inflict a good(high damage with conditions or be shure to inflict a good damage with direct damage. direct damage grant a little more survavibility but a necromancer have 0 survavibility, then there’s nothing to tell about, just chose the stronger damage and play it. And always more players use the direct damage.

Ranger with trap is the easiest build to kill, inflict poor condition damage and there’s more or less no one that use it, unless in low level unranked for fun. Seriously: traps? 3 burn, 4 poison and few bleed? And only if you use all your traps! Don’t joke me, please! But a ranger can burst you down with his LB+HoT pet combo and that’s enough to kill everyone they want.

Mesmers on the other side try to play direct damage but can’t because they’re only good build is with condition, making them one of the lesser played class of this meta, still if one of the best.

oh, there’s the engineer that can spam burn pretty good but it’s really easy to clean or avoid. The same for the Guardian. And, please, tell me that you don’t die against burn guardian…they’re absolutly easy to kill with every class and build. Guardian is the class with the best access to Burn and able to stack it really fast, but is so easy to clean and evade that no one use it since Pre-HoT, unles to have fun.
No other classes can condi bomb.

And even when i tell you that a condi build can Burst you, i mean with at last 5-8 seconds of time to build up his conditions. not even a warrior can burst you faster.
The only thing that make you THINK that an enemy is Bursting you with conditions is when he stacked on you enough conditions to inflict 3k/sec (or more) and you think that all that damage come from his last few skills, while that damage had been accumulated with a lot of time and made it grow hitting you with different skills.

ONLY DIRECT DAMAGE CAN (really) BURST YOU. That’s all. only a direct damage build can inflict you 8k istant with a Single Skill in lesser than a second, or 4k istant with a Single Hit.
Conditions can inflict up to 3k/sec 8maybe 4 if you don’t really have condi clean on you) with a lot of skills and stacks of conditions, but a player need time to build them up, still if you feel different.

About passive ways to reduce condition damage there’s the new necromancer Reaper Shroud 3 that reduce by 20% direct and condition damage. There’s also runes that reduce condition duration on you up to 25%, reducing also they’re damage.
Also, clean a condition mean reduce to 0 the incoming damage from all the cleaned stacks of that condition and is the equivalent of All your defensive trait+boon+effects added together. Clean a full stack of burn and all the damage you’ll feel will be the damage done to you in the time between the application and the activation of your condi clean. That will grant you a reduction of that condition stack damage up to 90%. Much more than any impossible combination of toughness, rune, trait and skills from different sources you can find in this game.
And there’s an insane amount of skill,trait,rune,sigil,CombiField that clean conditions, granting you a easy access to counters against condition damage.

If there’s only a single meta build over 9 classes that is able to use conditions better than direct damage to kill you and you still think that condition damage is the source of every bad thing of this game, i can only tell you to look to the evidences and tell you: over 9 enemies you can find on your way only one have conditions, and is not the top build of this game, do you fear him so much to nerf conditions to the ground only to be able to see the other 8 classes kill you with direct damage bursts?

If you don’t think that the main Classes that use Condis can stack wel over 15+ stacks of a single Damaging Condi at the bare minimum and then have it covered with other Condis to protect from cleanses is laughable.

I know that most classes outside Ele, Druid and Guardian don’t have enough Cleanses to stop from melting within a matter of 2-3 seconds from those types of Burst, I know this because when I fee bored I use similar troll builds that effectively burst anyone down before they can respond.

And again Point out an Attribute that reduces Condi damage passively.

But every post written shows me what the issue is and it’s not that Condis are weak, especially when players dot know the basis of the systems they are talking about, and the Damage Calculation is on the Wiki

Apolo.5942:

Have been saying that damage is out of control for a while now.

This latest patch has not done anything to bring things back to reasonable levels, if anything, quite the oposite.

I agree, although I do think they have done a good job of removing random damage. Passive random proc sigs were not good for the game so the changes there really helped to remove random damage from the game. Now they need to hit base power levels and the amounts of condi application that’s available and everything can start settling down a bit. Ofc, defense has to be hit too otherwise we get bunker meta 2.0

iKeostuKen.2738:

Good points, and your absolutely right about trait management. It sucks having to look at dead traits that will never in any situation win over a must pick. I wanted suggest the Power/Support/Defence tree idea for having to pick and choose between the sustain or the damage or etc. but i couldnt even design that out in my head to add it to the list.

Regarding the crits, although theres times where I bring up my combat log and notice that i haven’t been getting non critted for a while you have a point. Base damage is a bit to high and I still cant get behind modifiers being ok, when I look at some that are giving 20% damage increase at specific hp percentages and it takes less then a second to get a players hp that low at times.

With ports, maybe halving the range was a stretch, but im seeing them used more as engagers then disengagers. I can understand of having the need for gap closers but some come with undodgeable CC, unless your lucky enough to anticipate an instant cast and dodge especially when there coming through the wall or any other obstacle.
Things like thief shortbow, ele teleport, mesmer phase retreat are fine with there current range and I didnt mean to change those.

Possible solutions to the trait thing:
1) Go back to the original trait system where ther was the possibility to min/max stuff and then compress the stronger traits higher in trees so you have to invest and still choose between the traits you want for your build

2) Make the top line of each trait tree offensive buffs to the area your traiting (I.E SA line on thief top line could be along the lines of revealed training, hidden killer, and rending shade ofc not with all those choices because that’d be a ton of good choices in one line) and then middle could be defensive selections for that area (I.E Shadow’s embrace, resilience of shadows, and shadow’s rejuv) with bottom line being for utility (I.E Hidden thief, cloaked in shadows, and shadow protector) then each line has possible defensive, offensive, or utility selections that give you the ability to change how that aspect of your build plays. It also leads to diversity in playstyle. Even just with SA, I could use it to give me the ability to be heavily aggressive through stealth, give me recovery abilities, or give my skills extra functions with stealth.
If possible, then you can lock people into having to choose the offensive line, defensive, or utility but I feel free selection if traits are placed right would be good enough.

3) You consolidate all the trees into 3 line:
Offensive, where all the damage mods crit benefits and other aggressive traits are put
Defensive, where recovery damage reduc and active protection traits are put
Utility, where traits that change how skills interact and the style you can play with are put.
Then you can give a set number of points and people choose where to put them and what they will take from those trees.

These are just things I made on the spot so there are probably better solutions out there but this is just food for thought.

Part of the reason you get crit almost all the time is because of heavy boon presence. Fury being easily upkept permanently gives everyone who really wants it a 20% extra bonus. So all those 20% and 30% chance bruisers are running with 40-50% all the time which makes investing into crit pointless. Honestly they ought to heavily reduce access to fury and lower it to a 10% buff so people can’t keep making these “Perfect builds” for their classes that have everything they could ever want.

I think a reduction in base damage would have to be the first step, then mods would have to be looked at. Before I take a full stance on mods I’d want to see how things would develop with a better system of forcing investment rather than giving people everything and then reduced overall damage.

Cynz.9437:

I have a feeling you never played before HoT. Or forgot that things like medi guards, signet thief, zerk war etc.

I’d fight old medi guards. At least, they were fun to fight. :P

Thats a stupid and overly general approach to balance. You need one thing, such as 5v5 class balance for soloq. Yall complained about damage when boonspam bunkers where meta and will complain if they remove dmg from the game. I can see daze spam being cancer and people complaining about it with the ops changes.

Balancing classes around 1v1s would fix soloq better than any of the mentioned suggestions, since it has a goal in mind.

Just want to point out something that people seem to be confused on as far as blocks and invuln go. They work exactly the same for both power and condition damage. If you are blocking or invuln and get hit be either a power or condition attack, YOU WILL TAKE NO DAMAGE. None, zilch, zero. If you get hit by a power or condition skill before you block or go invuln, you still take the full amount of power damage and conditions ALREADY ON YOU will keep ticking. Can you understand this now? It works the same way. Do you get hit by a 4k power attack and then block and somehow magically get that 4k health back while blocking? No! So why would you expect conditions to stop ticking on you just because you started blocking or went invuln AFTER YOU WERE ALREADY HIT WITH THE CONDI ATTACK!? I mean geez guys, think about it a bit before you come here complaining about things you apparently don’t even understand.

People’s problem is instead of blocking the skills that apply the condis they block after and get upset because the damage has already been done and there’s nothing they can do. That being said, condi application and cleanse all needs to be toned down so it can actually function as DoT and not an alternative burst. There’s way too much condi in game atm and there’s too much cleanse to allow the reduction of condi without eliminating it from the game. They both need to be reduced at the same time so that one doesn’t dominate the other.

What is wrong with condi being able to burst? Sure some condi application skills could be shaved a bit, just as some power damage skills could be shaved, but why should power be allowed to burst but not condi?

Shaogin.2679:

What is wrong with condi being able to burst? Sure some condi application skills could be shaved a bit, just as some power damage skills could be shaved, but why should power be allowed to burst but not condi?

If condi can dps and burst, then why does physical damage exist?

Apolo.5942:

Shaogin.2679:

What is wrong with condi being able to burst? Sure some condi application skills could be shaved a bit, just as some power damage skills could be shaved, but why should power be allowed to burst but not condi?

If condi can dps and burst, then why does physical damage exist?

To also dps and burst, duh. They are two alternate play styles to achieve the same goal. People say they want conditions to be a slow, low damage over time mechanic. However, that would make them pretty much useless since they wouldn’t survive long enough to kill anything and that pathetic level of damage would simply be healed through or cleansed once it became a threat.

Now if you want condi classes to be super slow killers, then we could give them super tank stats and builds to compensate. However, I know you guys would complain about that too. Can hear it now, “QQ condi bunker killed me, it’s broken OP!”

No, what people want is for conditions to be neutered to the point where they just can’t die to conditions. Players simply hate dying to conditions, and delude themselves into thinking that condi is cheese and power is skill, just to justify this biased hatred.

Oh, and for the record, this is coming from a player that only plays power builds.

Agree although the trait merge patch ruined gw2 pvp, not hot.

Pvp is bad and not fun. It was propped up by anet money, but once that went pvp collapsed because it is bad.