Guild Wars 2

There is a lot of discussion about the balance between power and conditions. Here is some maths as well as some personal opinion on the subject. Since I believe the question of boon vs condition is also related, I added it to the discussion. The takeaway is that things are not as bad – as some people think, but they probably still need a rework.

How many stats for power and conditions

One of the most argued thing about the power vs condi balance is that condi only need 1 stat (or 2 including condi duration) while power needs 3. Therefore condi can more easily add defensive stats, making the gameplay « easier ». The truth is not that simple for the very simple reason that there is no such thing as « condi » weapons or « condi skills » (or very few at least) but usually « hybrid » weapons or skills. So to reach the max damage, a hybrid skill needs not only condition damage and condition duration but also power stats. And you can actually balance the condi/power ratio of skills to make them balanced to a corresponding full power skill.

One important difference is that condition ignores armor. This is a very important feature and actually a very nice one. We do not want power and condi to be equivalent, ideally, both should fill a slightly different niche and adds some depth to the playstyle and in particular the team composition choice. So thanks to this armor-ignoring characteristic, the niche for power and condi is obvious: condi should be better to take down « bunkers » and power to take down « squishies ».

The take-home message from this is that the way stats work, you can get balanced damage output despite the alleged « less stats ». Actually, as you can see, with only damage stat (the others being defensive stats), power is a (slightly) better investment.

One additional point which needs to be mentioned is damage multipliers vs condition duration increase. Power damage is usually increased by traits adding some damage multipliers. They are usually on the order of 10%. On the other hand, there are many traits/runes (and food in other game modes) that increase condition duration by 20% or more. If we balance the base power vs condi balance, those « multipliers » also need to be balanced. It does not need to be reduced to 10% (since unlike power builds, in hybrid builds only a portion of the damage comes from conditions or power) but it definitely needs some balancing considerations.

How boons/debuff affect the output

Another important question is how do damage-augmenting boons (might, fury), and damage reducing boons and debuff (protection, resistance, weakness) affect the overall power/condi balance.

So overall, for balance, the base tick of some conditions should be increased slightly so that might does not get overly stronger on hybrid builds compare to power builds. Burning is a good example of a « balanced » condition from that perspective. Also, resistance should have its efficiency reduced (for example by half) and a debuff should be added that reduces condition damage output.

Condition cleanse and the boon/debuff balance

While I didn’t mention it specifically, all of those maths above only make sense if you assume condition do not get cleansed. If they do, then that will of course reduce the condition output and favor power builds.

This is I believe the problems we have currently with conditions. In order to be balanced, the cleanse have to be taken into account, and conditions have to be made comparatively stronger.

Overall, negations make the game unhealthy. So condition cleanse/resistance are unhealthy, the plethora of blocks and reflects is unhealthy etc…

An additional problem is that there is really 2 categories of conditions:

• damaging conditions (bleeding, burning, confusion, torment)
• debuff (blind, chilled, crippled, fear, immobilize, poison, slow, taunt, vulnerability, weakness)

Poison is technically hybrid, but I consider it mostly a debuff.

Because the main way to handle condition damage is condition cleanse, we have now an lot of cleanses and AOE cleanses flying around and debuff are very fast removed. Because of this, they cannot play their role as a boon equivalent.

My suggestion (and I am not the only one to suggest it) is simply to split those 2 things. Then, a good way to proceed (according to me) is to make condition cleanse only affect debuffs (and reduce significantly the amount of cleanse available). The soft CC debuff (especially chill and immobilize) probably need additional specific cleanses (it is already the case on a few classes, and taunt and fear can already be stun-breaked) considering they can be more dangerous (more CC than debuff). You would then have boons and debuffs mirroring each other, with condi cleanse and boon rip also mirroring each other. We would get both power vs condition damage balance (from above arguments) and boons/debuff balance.

A small (but nice) benefit to this is that we could start to gray out condition damage in our HP bar, allowing to more easily see he damage we take for each enemy skill and learn to react to it, and also just get an idea of how low our actual life is.

But the most important point with this balancing is adding build diversity. You would now have builds supporting their team thanks to boons or thanks to debuffs (currently, debuff support is much weaker than boon support such that necromancer or thief is considered unviable in a support role). Some classes have natural preference for boons (elementalist, guardian, engineer), some have preference for debuffs (necromancer, thief). Some have mixed (mesmer for example often has this duality). On the other side, some classes can AOE cleanse conditions (guardian, necromancer) while some can AOE boon rip (necromancer, mesmer, thief should probably get that too). You also have classes which can share protection to everyone (elementalist/guardian), some which can share resistance (revenant, mesmer), some which can spread weakness (necromancer, thief) some which can spread whatever new debuff to reduce the condition damage output.

This creates a great rock-paper-scissor which puts more emphasis on strategy in team comp selection and is much healthier than the current system.

Hmmm, as far as what you need to make conditions effective you are over generalizing. For instance for an engineer to be most effective they ideally want to take something like firearms that applies vuln and bleeed, and burn on crit. AND gives crit bonuses when bleeding. Which means you want to critically hit. Which means you probably want precision.

shion.2084:

Hmmm, as far as what you need to make conditions effective you are over generalizing. For instance for an engineer to be most effective they ideally want to take something like firearms that applies vuln and bleeed, and burn on crit. AND gives crit bonuses when bleeding. Which means you want to critically hit. Which means you probably want precision.

I am not over generalizing but rather over simplifying. Yes, there are traits on most classes which give a condition on crit. Those need to be taken into account in the balance. My maths are just an illustration, you would need a little more work to balance all possible builds.

So a wall of text to simply say :" buff necro and nerf the rest"…kk

Like not only there is no base stat reducing condition dmg but..you also suggest to reduce the number of cleanse..and have them only affect disabling condis?!….This thread is gold…it’s just epic

Supreme.3164:

So a wall of text to simply say :" buff necro and nerf the rest"…kk

Like not only there is no base stat reducing condition dmg but..you also suggest to reduce the number of cleanse..and have them only affect disabling condis?!….This thread is gold…it’s just epic

if you read carefully what OP said you wouldnt said that.

he siad give more builds diversity which emphasis the role of each class to counter each other but changing the role of some conditions/boons

i do agree some class had better way to cleanse than others and probably should be balanced. but the general idea is intresting

I might have missed it, but if condition cleanse only removed debuffs, how would you remove damaging conditions themselves? I mean, there are so many random conditions flying around (right now they are both debuff and damage ones) that without any way to cleanse damaging conditions, you would get overwhelmed with damage condis (since a randomly applied damaging condition deals much more damage over time, than a random physical damage hit).

Tomiyou.3790:

I might have missed it, but if condition cleanse only removed debuffs, how would you remove damaging conditions themselves? I mean, there are so many random conditions flying around (right now they are both debuff and damage ones) that without any way to cleanse damaging conditions, you would get overwhelmed with damage condis (since a randomly applied damaging condition deals much more damage over time, than a random physical damage hit).

The OP of this thread is a well known necro main after all, so ofc this thread ends up being a veiled “buff me, nerf them” kinda of thread

Supreme.3164:

Tomiyou.3790:

I might have missed it, but if condition cleanse only removed debuffs, how would you remove damaging conditions themselves? I mean, there are so many random conditions flying around (right now they are both debuff and damage ones) that without any way to cleanse damaging conditions, you would get overwhelmed with damage condis (since a randomly applied damaging condition deals much more damage over time, than a random physical damage hit).

The OP of this thread is a well known necro main after all, so ofc this thread ends up being a veiled “buff me, nerf them” kinda of thread

I really like the idea, it is very good, however it is certainly not the biggest problem right now in terms of balance. The problem is that the changes this idea would take are massive and would require a great deal of changes from Anet. Either they do it all at once, or they fix the current imbalance. Or they stick to their fashion and simply continue with the current “balance” :P

The mechanics are complicated enough. Plz don’t make things even more complex.

Tomiyou.3790:

I might have missed it, but if condition cleanse only removed debuffs, how would you remove damaging conditions themselves? I mean, there are so many random conditions flying around (right now they are both debuff and damage ones) that without any way to cleanse damaging conditions, you would get overwhelmed with damage condis (since a randomly applied damaging condition deals much more damage over time, than a random physical damage hit).

Well that was the point of the first part. You do not have condition damage cleanse anymore. Instead, you have more access to condition mitigation (resistance and a corresponding debuff).

But the main point is that condition output has to be balanced with power. So for example, I showed that a “damage coefficient” of 1000 can be converted to 600 + 6.5 bleeds. So precisely “no more damage over time than a physical damage hit”. An essentially balanced output, with the main difference is the armor-ignoring feature and the fact that it requires a different build (resistance instead of protection for example) to counter it.

Supreme.3164:

The OP of this thread is a well known necro main after all, so ofc this thread ends up being a veiled “buff me, nerf them” kinda of thread

I didn’t realize I was “well known” anything. But no, my post is actually asking for a condi rebalancing not a buff in any ways (probably a nerf). My main is a mesmer and I do not play condi chrono because I do not like it. I currently play mostly power shatter… a build which is in big part dead because of condition damage.

My point is simply that currently, once could say that power and condi are balanced. About half of the meta is condi, the other one power. But this is a unhealthy balance, which puts high pressure on build diversity since you have to spec everything you can to deal with condis.

My suggested change may allow support necromancer to become a bit more viable. But not to make necro overall stronger, just more diverse. I love diversity and I hate unbalances. If you look at my post history, you would see me asking for nerfs to my main countless times. Build diversity means nerfing the OP things and buffing the UP things.

Tomiyou.3790:

I really like the idea, it is very good, however it is certainly not the biggest problem right now in terms of balance. The problem is that the changes this idea would take are massive and would require a great deal of changes from Anet. Either they do it all at once, or they fix the current imbalance. Or they stick to their fashion and simply continue with the current “balance” :P

This is indeed true. This change is mechanically easy but implies a lot of rebalancing. But the devs have shown in the past (june 23rd patch) that big changes are possible if they are needed (in that case, it was to streamline the trait system to allow elite specs). So one can dream…

Rezzet.3614:

you seem to be ignoring the biggest factor

Conditions have Debuffs
Poison cuts heaing by 33%
Confusion deals damage over time and massive damage un skill and evade use
Torment deals damage over time and double when moving
Weakness reduces crit chance and endurance gain and a chance for normal attacks to deal 50% less damage

I agree with poison, and I simply don’t think poison should be a significant source of damage, the healing reduction should be the main point of the condition (it is already somewhat the case, very few builds have poison as a main damage source). Torment and confusion have mechanics, but they are not really debuff, they just do damage. Weakness has no damage component. You could cite fear which can be damaging for necros.

then theres the fact not all professions have low cooldown condition cleanse whereas conditions get to be spammed non stop

Actually that is the whole point: the main reason to invest in cleanse is currently the damage. I want damaging conditions to be uncleansable and dangerous soft CC (chill/immobilize) to have additional cleanse (like thief for example). Then because of the lower amount of cleanse, the condi output can be reduced. Vulnerability and weakness should not be spammed but should be as frequent as might and protection (well I think protection is already too frequent but you get the point) but be given to different classes so that boons are not ruling supreme.

simply put Conditions were never meant to have equal nor superior damage over power

Initially no probably. But then a-net went for it, especially for PvE. Now that is part of their design. I don’t want condi to be superior, but an equally viable alternative, with a different focus.

Soooooooooo let’s make every class have no damaging condition clear? rofl

It’s already bad enough that conditions are hilariously easy to cover to cause enemies to blow condition clears. Weakness and protection affect power only while vulnerability also affects conditions. Resistance is hardly available. I don’t think you even factored -50% damage reduction effects such as Bulwark Gyro, “Rise!”, “Guard!” or Phantasmal Defender. A necromancer that puts weakness on me and casts “Rise!” becomes essentially immune to my 94% crit chance Marauder Invocation revenant. And with all this power damage hate in the game, you think it would be “healthier” to remove the only thing we have to negate conditions.

silly idea, nice try bub

all sounds nice and all but theres the fact condi not only gets all the debuff but also get all of the boons as conditions get to have boon corruption and boon strip

some conditions are complete combat disruptor for example confusion shuts down evade and skill use on players wo got cleanse on cooldown

torment shuts down movement ontop of both dealing damage over time

conditions were never meant to reach the same kind of damage power builds do and much less then deal it in a second tick basis

Silverkey.2078:

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How many stats for power and conditions

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One of the most argued thing about the power vs condi balance is that condi only need 1 stat (or 2 including condi duration) while power needs 3. Therefore condi can more easily add defensive stats, making the gameplay « easier ». The truth is not that simple for the very simple reason that there is no such thing as « condi » weapons or « condi skills » (or very few at least) but usually « hybrid » weapons or skills. So to reach the max damage, a hybrid skill needs not only condition damage and condition duration but also power stats.

condi should be better to take down « bunkers » and power to take down « squishies ».

Let’s take for example bleeding for our condition damage and assume a reference damage « coefficient » of 1000 for the power build (not to be confused with the weapon damage coefficient which needs to be multiplied by the weapon coefficient).

I am not agree with what you said,

First you are saying that there is a few weappons that are not fully for conditions damage. Thats not true, there is plenty of weappons that are specialize in condition damages. As the scepter of mesmer, the pistol of the engineer, every torch in the game, the long bow of the war, the staff of the necro, the scepter of the necro, the short bow of the ranger, the axe off hand of the ranger, the mace of war in zerker specialization, the mace of the revenant, the axe off hand of the revenant…

Well I stoped here because i think you understand my point…

Second, when you said that condi builds down bunker and zerker ones down squishes I totally agree, thats why every one is ragging againts conditions in PvP context. Cause the PvP of this game is full of tanks as the game mode is cap point defense.

Third, you generalize that everyone is optimal in hybrid mode. Well again that not the case. Maybe for the mesmer that can do a lot of damages using the same ability (shatter). So dont generalize too much because is actually not the case at all. People need defensive stats and you dont take that in count in your post.

Forth, you are not talking about the rapidity of application. Because there is a lot of classes (like mesmer because I know is what you play) that was a insane RE-application of conditions such as confusion/torment/bleed/weakness. So dispels are good but not that good when the enemy can RE-apply all conditions instantly.

—> The conclusion is that people dont like to take risk so they mostly play conditions build with toughtness and vitality to survive…

PS: the only true hybrid that was played with optimal weappon set and everything was maybe the elementalist double dagger. But, for the news, the elementalist D/D was benn nerf to the ground and now it is not possible to run full celestial and burn your enemy at the same time.

PS2: Why elementalist is the class that was the most hybrid weappons set ?? —> cause is the one who was the less number of weappons swicht … (engi doesnt count cause they can use they kits as long as they want/drop it and re-use it with out CD ^^)

see you

Silverkey.2078:

shion.2084:

Hmmm, as far as what you need to make conditions effective you are over generalizing. For instance for an engineer to be most effective they ideally want to take something like firearms that applies vuln and bleeed, and burn on crit. AND gives crit bonuses when bleeding. Which means you want to critically hit. Which means you probably want precision.

I am not over generalizing but rather over simplifying. Yes, there are traits on most classes which give a condition on crit. Those need to be taken into account in the balance. My maths are just an illustration, you would need a little more work to balance all possible builds.

Generalizing in that you are performing the fallacy of hasty generalization attributing characteristics which affect one class to those of all classes in an effort to argue your point. It may be the case that only the condition trait is required for a given class to be effective, however that doesn’t mean that all classes share that attribute.

Logical Form:

Sample S is taken from population P.

Sample S is a very small part of population P.

Conclusion C is drawn from sample S.

There is really no need to argue the semantics between generalization and simplification as we were kind of both saying the same thing… but since you decided to take the opportunity to correct me, I will say that it may also be simplification but I was quite right in calling it a generalization.

GLOR.2489:

I am not agree with what you said,

First you are saying that there is a few weappons that are not fully for conditions damage. Thats not true, there is plenty of weappons that are specialize in condition damages. As the scepter of mesmer, the pistol of the engineer, every torch in the game, the long bow of the war, the staff of the necro, the scepter of the necro, the short bow of the ranger, the axe off hand of the ranger, the mace of war in zerker specialization, the mace of the revenant, the axe off hand of the revenant…

All the weapons you cite are hybrid weapons. What I mean when I say “not fully condition damage” is that very few skills have ONLY conditions, they usually also apply some power damage. And overall no build can do 100% of its damage through conditions, you always have some (usually significant) part being power damage.

Forth, you are not talking about the rapidity of application. Because there is a lot of classes (like mesmer because I know is what you play) that was a insane RE-application of conditions such as confusion/torment/bleed/weakness. So dispels are good but not that good when the enemy can RE-apply all conditions instantly.

And that is a good reason why my suggestion would be nice. Currently, in order to exist with all cleanses there is, conditions need to be reapplied very fast. The only condition builds you see are those which have OP application (warrior, necro, mesmer). With my suggestion, you will not cleanse torment/confusion/bleed but you will rebalance the application so that those builds work without being OP.

shion.2084:

Generalizing in that you are performing the fallacy of hasty generalization attributing characteristics which affect one class to those of all classes in an effort to argue your point. It may be the case that only the condition trait is required for a given class to be effective, however that doesn’t mean that all classes share that attribute.

Logical Form:

Sample S is taken from population P.

Sample S is a very small part of population P.

Conclusion C is drawn from sample S.

There is really no need to argue the semantics between generalization and simplification as we were kind of both saying the same thing… but since you decided to take the opportunity to correct me, I will say that it may also be simplification but I was quite right in calling it a generalization.

I did not “correct” you to imply you were wrong, but simply to emphasize the reasoning for this “generalization”: it makes things simpler to calculate. If you have to include on-crit effects, you have to add assumptions about the average damage per hit which makes the results much less generally applicable.

My example was an example showing that you can get balance “despite using less stats”. This example applies easily to all classes, just change the condition types (bleeds, torment, confusion or bleeding) and adjust the numbers accordingly.

Just to add a bit to why I think my argument is still useful: the exception you suggest (condition on crit) is the main exception to this example and indeed most classes have such traits. But

1. they are not always used (example dueling is rarely used for condi chronomancer, curses is often but not always used for condi reaper) so my example works well in those cases.
2. since they add a dependence on another stat, they are even easier to balance wrt power damage.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Soooooooooo let’s make every class have no damaging condition clear? rofl

It’s already bad enough that conditions are hilariously easy to cover to cause enemies to blow condition clears. Weakness and protection affect power only while vulnerability also affects conditions. Resistance is hardly available. I don’t think you even factored -50% damage reduction effects such as Bulwark Gyro, “Rise!”, “Guard!” or Phantasmal Defender. A necromancer that puts weakness on me and casts “Rise!” becomes essentially immune to my 94% crit chance Marauder Invocation revenant. And with all this power damage hate in the game, you think it would be “healthier” to remove the only thing we have to negate conditions.

silly idea, nice try bub

I don’t understand why people seem to only read 1/3 of what I wrote. Yeah sure, I wrote a long text, but you can’t deny my argument by reading only 1/3 of it.

The first and main element is : LET US BALANCE POWER VS CONDI OUTPUT. Second argument: LET US REMOVE CONDITION NEGATION AND INCREASE CONDITION MITIGATION. So now, point by point:

• I suggest making resistance less strong (only half damage taken instead of full negation) but making it more available (i.e. on par with protection, but on different classes or traits so that people have to choose what type of damage protection they want)
• I suggest adding a new condition like weakness but against conditions
• All the pets absorbing damage absorb also condition damage as far as I know. If it is not the case, it should be changed so.

And now for the thing I don’t write but I agree: there is currently too much damage mitigation. Too much protection, weakness, damage-absorbing pet skills etc… This should definitely be brought in line. Of course, so should damage, and revenant damage is definitely top of the list. We all agree that the power creep (power used in a general way so it includes defense) has reduced the quality of PvP, but this is a subject on its own.

well i wouldnt like to sound mean, but rlly you needed a whole math bible calculation to say what i said like 10 mounths ago? That cleanser should only be able to cleanse the debuffs condis?
Rlly is so evident that to balance out condition and specific condition application traits/rune/random procs anet should make ONLY DEBUFFER CONDI cleansable, it’s so obvious that even a new born child would understand…
But no, actualy we can’t point out any of those specific easy skill condi application, cuz even if condi are coming out from anything a player does, like any farth a fat slow brain no timing condi player does you get random condis in the air, the answer of those lazy low reaction/no opponent reading players will be “you can cleanse!!!”. Yea sure, you can cleanse!!!! Cleanse man so i can reapply those condi abusing the fact you are not going offensive!!! And when you run out of condi cleanse, let me burst two thousand times those skills that were so easy to spot and nerf (gunflame, thrue shot, surge of the mist, etc..).
Cuz is so nice for a so called e-sport to have to rely on luck to cleanse those 12 stacks of bleeding/poison and hoping you wont get that kittening single stack of vulnerability cleansed instead…

Seriously arenanet, delete condi dmg cleanser, let us cleanse only debuffs, and start balancing skills from that.

Shala.8352:

well i wouldnt like to sound mean, but rlly you needed a whole math bible calculation to say what i said like 10 mounths ago???

The maths was only to show that condition damage can be balanced “despite using less stats”.

Otherwise, happy to see someone on the same boat. It sounds unobvious for many that to prevent conditions from being OP, you need less cleanse…

Silverkey.2078:

Shala.8352:

well i wouldnt like to sound mean, but rlly you needed a whole math bible calculation to say what i said like 10 mounths ago???

The maths was only to show that condition damage can be balanced “despite using less stats”.

Otherwise, happy to see someone on the same boat. It sounds unobvious for many that to prevent conditions from being OP, you need less cleanse…

A good mentality, but I believe we can only dream.

Silverkey.2078:

Nice wall of text, with this as base:

• Berserker amulet: 1282
• Paladin amulet: 1001
• (old) Soldier amulet: 863

• Viper: 1304 (58% of it being condition damage)
• Mercenary : 1035 (53% being condition damage)
• Dire: 846 (72% being condition damage)

Nice wall of text. However, one very important part not being shown is the actual damage a skill does with those stats. Some condition attacks are way out of bounds, reaching 15k+ in a single application (yes yes, if not cleansed).

Hanza.6872:

Silverkey.2078:

Nice wall of text, with this as base:

• Berserker amulet: 1282
• Paladin amulet: 1001
• (old) Soldier amulet: 863

• Viper: 1304 (58% of it being condition damage)
• Mercenary : 1035 (53% being condition damage)
• Dire: 846 (72% being condition damage)

Nice wall of text. However, one very important part not being shown is the actual damage a skill does with those stats. Some condition attacks are way out of bounds, reaching 15k+ in a single application (yes yes, if not cleansed).

I am very much aware of that, which is why I basically mentioned that to make a balanced condi application, it seems that you approximately need 600 damage “coef” and 6.5 bleeds to compare to a coef of 1000 for pure power damage. Both of those would do approximately the same total damage for the same number of offensive stats.

It is really the key part: you cannot do one without the other. First balance the application, then only you can remove cleanse.

So correct me if I’m reading this wrong, but you want condi cleanses to not affect damaging condis while not offering a way to deal with them? Yeahhhh no. This would be such an insane buff to certain builds (condi thief, mesmer) that they would be broken beyond all possible repair.

I agree with you that resistance shouldn’t be 100% immunity. Instead, it should only reduce condi damage by 33% but still grant immunity to movement impairing condis. To balance this, more classes should gain access to it than just warrior and revenant.