Guild Wars 2

PvP Balance and Skills Team,

Regardless of the source, I want to ask to keep the change that has to do with capping boon and condition duration stacking and do not let people convince you otherwise.

I believe this single change will be the most significant and positive for pvp in that entire patch and whoever thought of that idea deserves a cookie cake.

Right now if someone wants to bring condis to a team fight they can spam burning and poison indefinitely and don’t have to think about it at all. Those conditions can stack infinitely and the skills that provide that have no reason not to be spammed if they just have a cooldown.

If that cap goes in then spam becomes a waste because while you can still stack a lot of burning, there is a penalty for just spamming because if you blow all your cooldowns the enemy can cleanse and now you’re not putting very much pressure on while they can do whatever they want to you.

This would shift condi builds toward bleeding and confusion, which stack highest if people are coordinating their attacks on single targets and using utilities like Epidemic to spread them. That is more intelligent condi play. That would make condis much more respectable than the way they are being used right now where people take burn on crit for Engi and Necro and just fire away, indiscriminate of what their skills are intended to do.

For boons, the regen stacking is probably the best out of all of them because if you think about how much regen you can stack from a healing spring and a guardian on point that makes it obscene how much extra healing/second you get as a team. It’s nuts. Capping that prevents a super bunker meta from springing forth to just tank all the damage with unlimited regen and protection from a stone spirit or two.

That systemic change would make people have to consider their builds in both power and condi builds as a team more intelligently and that would be a significant upgrade to what we’ve been seeing all summer with mindless builds becoming dominant.

TLDR:

Keep the condi and boon stacking cap. Don’t let ignorant people trash a great idea that improves the playerbase’s decision making

I know this is the PvP forum, but the burning cap is an awful idea in PvE. The last thing PvE needs is another DPS condition cap. If anything, ArenaNet should be living up to its word and finding a fix for bleed cap.

In both PvE and PvP, it really depends on how the cap for burning will work. Will a weak burn effect from, say, a bunker guardian be replaced by a strong burn effect from, say, a condition engineer? If so, that’s fine. If not, this game is about to become a nightmare for a lot of builds.

I also don’t see how this cap can be designed with burning fields like Fire Bomb in mind. What’s the point of those abilities if they’re just going to help cap enemies with mostly two-second burn effects?

Except perma burning and poison are still possible. It can happen like this.
Player 1 inflicts burning on target one for 3 s.
At the same time everyone else on the team inflicts burning for say 10s total.
At 10s. Someone can proc burning. Even if you still have burning on you, someone can add to it because it is at 4 stacks after that first 3s have worn off.

Essentially nothing will really change.

From what I’ve seen it’s FIFO with condis, so if the condi engi starts off the burns then it scales with his condi dmg.

It should be a nightmare for spam builds. Spam builds are stupid as hell if they can be multiplied and stack infinite duration in areas of effect

jportell.2197:

Except perma burning and poison are still possible. It can happen like this.
Player 1 inflicts burning on target one for 3 s.
At the same time everyone else on the team inflicts burning for say 10s total.
At 10s. Someone can proc burning. Even if you still have burning on you, someone can add to it because it is at 4 stacks after that first 3s have worn off.

Essentially nothing will really change.

In small engagements it won’t be noticeable, but in team fights there would be a ton of wasted burning stacks in the current meta. Over time, those stacks would not be able to stick on the target because their wasted skills would not keep pace with the cleansing.

That’s the beauty of it – team fights would be determined by how intelligently you place the condis instead of just spamming them. Spammers would get rolled over by smart cleanses.

If you have a few sources of burn/poison and stack bleeds and confusion then you’re going to have focus fire from a condi team. That is the total opposite of what they’re doing right now and in a more positive, respectable way.

I really don’t see this being much of a change… Boon wise and condi wise. The only place it may be noticeable is wvw where you can’t get a full minute of swiftness anymore or get a minute of poison on an entire zerg…

In PvP I don’t see this changing much.

It currently works so it just goes through a first come, first serve list. So if a power guardian, condition necromancer and condition engineer each stack a four-second burn, the first four seconds will scale with the guardian, the next four will scale with the condition necromancer and the final four will scale with the condition engineer.

If that system remains, it means a power build with a fire field could accidentally stack five burns and screw over the condition builds. That would be a disaster.

My prediction: This won’t have any effect in cleanse-heavy PvP, but it will further nerf condition builds in PvE, an environment in which condition builds already struggle.

It would only be a disaster if people bring too much burning. There should be a penalty for stacking that condition, if you look at the duration of burning in a team fight with the meta builds it’s at least 30 to 40 seconds on the focused target, usually more.

If the condi stacking were more limited then there wouldn’t be a need for a cap. The problem comes when you’re just spamming AoE on a point and getting optimum pressure without having to pay attention to how many your teammates have been putting on.

That is mindless play. Mindless, bad. Bleeding on the other hand is not stacked as mindlessly because you usually have to focus fire it.

How is that not better than what we’re dealing with right now?

Because Lopez is a necro that has been enjoying god mode for the last 3 months.

Honestly, I don’t think that the patch will change much. The problem for burning is not that it stacks in duration, but that it can be reapplied constantly via on-crit traits, combos with fire fields and sun spirit. Perma-burning will still be possible. The extra burning duration gained through stacking and “nerfed” away is already wasted when the target dies.

Necromancers aren’t really god mode anymore, but I was one of the first people calling for a nerf to Dhuumfire and Terror. I’m glad I got both.

It could be disaster in situations in which an ability is either uncontrollable or stacks burning by accident. A good example is the new Hallowed Ground: Should a guardian really have to consider the burning cap when looking at picking up a great group utility skill that will help counter the condition metagame? Similarly, should that same guardian worry that his Virtue of Justice will occasionally cap out burning effects and maybe hinder another uncontrollable proc from his condition engineer or condition necromancer teammate?

I don’t think these situations will prop up much in PvP, so I’m not really worried about them in that environment. But it seems like a really flawed balance decision in PvE, a game type in which condition builds have never been god mode.

Lopez.7369:

Necromancers aren’t really god mode anymore, but I was one of the first people calling for a nerf to Dhuumfire and Terror. I’m glad I got both.

It could be disaster in situations in which an ability is either uncontrollable or stacks burning by accident. A good example is the new Hallowed Ground: Should a guardian really have to consider the burning cap when looking at picking up a great group utility skill that will help counter the condition metagame? Similarly, should that same guardian worry that his Virtue of Justice will occasionally cap out burning effects and maybe hinder another uncontrollable proc from his condition engineer or condition necromancer teammate?

I don’t think these situations will prop up much in PvP, so I’m not really worried about them in that environment. But it seems like a really flawed balance decision in PvE, a game type in which condition builds have never been god mode.

These are the PvP forums, we don’t care about your PvE your killing a NPC so get over it.

I think this change is rather intense. That being said I’m in favour of it. Yes a team can stack a perma condi when focusing and coordinated but at least it’s real team play. To me that’s perfectly fine.

Also I think this should only be the case in sPvP and maybe WvW

how about making burning, poison stack intensity instead?

problem solved.

I dont see a reason why your Poison shouldn’t be saved until the enemy is at half hp and thus much more likely to start healing. And by that same token why shouldnt Burning be there as a way for condi players to provide a little more timed burst along with their team, instead of just another passive dps increase?

Ofcourse the traits dont allow this. Hell, even some passive crap like ‘when target is at 30% hp, your next attack crits and puts burning’ is better than ‘put burn when you crit’. Because it would at least allow some counterplay. There are just too many random condi’s thrown around atm. Wouldn’t it be better to start there?

I’m for this change . ( it counters mindless condition spamming )
I would even say if they dont do this change , i would quiet gw2.
Its the best attempt to balance out the condition meta yet. ( and we been waiting for months again)

Only zerging condition people will be against it.
And pve’ers( seeing AI is already to hard for them to work around…)

The problem is, condis are hardly the only RNG element in the combat here.

Power builds damage can be even more RNG tied since a crit can easily deal over two times their normal damage. We get situations where a citting facestab deals more damage than a non crit backstab. Or a critting blunderbuss at 400 range deals more damage than a non crit at 100 (less than melee range on a “ranged” weapon).

The least rng dependent might actually be the bunkers of old, but even then they where often at the whims of the aggressors luck anyways.

Oh right and weakness too.

Of course i would prefer if we didn’t have rng crits at all.

The reason I am suggesting to keep it instead of suggesting something new is because if that stays in, at least condi spamming is addressed. New ideas have to be talked about and approved, which takes Arenanet months.

PvE can be split though and they’re showing that they are willing and able to split things that can and should be. For example, minions are getting buffed just for PvE. As far as I’ve seen though, at least from O Eggs’ WvW adventures 1v4ing people, that conditions are just fine in that part of the game.

Is that the case for dungeons? I have no idea, and really I don’t care because all I’m playing the game for is PvP and maybe leveling a toon to 80 for farming WvW scrubs.

The boon/condition duration stacking change is pointless, it doesn’t do anything except probably hurt the abilities or procs that rely on lots of small applications that then become useless.

Team fights have a ton of stacks of burning and poison…

jmatb.6307:

Team fights have a ton of stacks of burning and poison…

And what exactly does stacking up to 50 seconds of burning/poison do for you?

When is that not cleansed?

It’s another case of Anet attacking the symptom and not the cause.

What doesn’t it do? Burning is the best DoT and poison reduces healing.

It’s cleansed, sure, but as soon as it’s up another set of several stacks come up, and then another. When you get in a team fight vs. a spirit ranger, necro, warrior, and guardian team you’ll see that for yourself. It doesn’t matter how many cleanses you bring you’re gonna get 20-50 s burning after each cleanse.

That much burning is kittened

Okay, I’ll try again: It does not matter if there are permanently 2-3s or 50s of poison/burning on the target. Poison/Burning can be constantly reapplied and will still have 100% uptime. The 5-stack limit is only a cosmetic chance and will – without nerfing proc chances and/or condition durations – not decrease overall condition damage.

jmatb.6307:

What doesn’t it do? Burning is the best DoT and poison reduces healing.

It’s cleansed, sure, but as soon as it’s up another set of several stacks come up, and then another. When you get in a team fight vs. a spirit ranger, necro, warrior, and guardian team you’ll see that for yourself. It doesn’t matter how many cleanses you bring you’re gonna get 20-50 s burning after each cleanse.

That much burning is kittened

Yes that is my point.

The 5 stack cap hurts the sympton (barely) instead of the cause.

The cause being it’s so easy to SPAM burn, as opposed to how much stacks up.