Guild Wars 2

I find it funny how people complained so bitterly about Dhuumfire and Sun Spirit RNG procs and now we have Sigils of Air and Fire proccing for 5k+ damage every 10 seconds but since it’s power damage people think it is fine.

Why can Thief get away with running 20066 right now? Dodge all day and wait for your RNG Air/Fire procs to make up for your bad DPS.

This is just as poor of design as Dhuumfire or Incendiary Powder, yet people have deluded themselves into thinking that (for some unknown reason) power is more ‘virtuous’ than conditions

Who wasn’t complaining? Fire and Air is BS and people have said it since before it even came out. A free 4-5k isn’t fair or balanced. Suddenly, that small damage Throw Gunk from a thief could crit for 6k damage.

I don’t think anyone cares anymore. Since, next update will probably happen in a year. The main people that QQ now on the fourms are new players who play solo que.

apt.9184:

I don’t think anyone cares anymore. Since, next update will probably happen in a year. The main people that QQ now on the fourms are new players who play solo que.

Truer than true

Doesn’t matter what gets posted, balance patches are done every 6 months using a ouija board in anet HQ. We all have to deal with it, even if that does mean we end up with turret engis and s/d everywhere for that whole 6-10 months,

We can still hope, that KongZhong takes balancing feedback more serious, and then tells ArenaNet what to change.

direct damage can be mitigated through armour toughness and protection if the sigil was going to hit you for 2k you can mitigate it way down.
if burning is going to deal 2k damage, it is going to deal 2k damage.

when was the last time you saw air/fire runes in your death breakdown list? (with the exception of lich cheese) probably never because the list is too dam crammed with conditions.

when we’re taking condition damage that is double/triple our health, 1-2k direct damage is unnoticeable.
that is the difference between power sigils and condi filth.

apt.9184:

I don’t think anyone cares anymore.

^this.

does anyone remember how the com complained about izzys random balance button in gw1? seeing what’s going on right now i want it back.

The thing is that a lot of people seem to miss when they make suggestions about balance and design etc, is the solution.

You must provide a solution that can be linked up to the gemshop. Thats the only changes that will happen.

Custom arena, gem shop.
Remove the wardrobe feature and put in a charge system, LIIINKED to the gem shop.

You have to figure out a way in which to make it more time consuming and a direct line to the credit card for the change to come in.

The only other changes have been complete failures anyway. Spectator mode……but only in hotjoin, which is of course known for its extremely high skill level.

Skyhammer, the map no one wants, the map everyone hates, the map which people afk in because they hate it so much. Anet’s response? a collection of more questions which are only there to confuse the situation some more. New courtyard map? bury it in the game browser, hotjoin only and a whole host of limitations. Did even make a very good map if you ask me.

Liewec.2896:

direct damage can be mitigated through armour toughness and protection if the sigil was going to hit you for 2k you can mitigate it way down.
if burning is going to deal 2k damage, it is going to deal 2k damage.

when was the last time you saw air/fire runes in your death breakdown list? (with the exception of lich cheese) probably never because the list is too dam crammed with conditions.

when we’re taking condition damage that is double/triple our health, 1-2k direct damage is unnoticeable.
that is the difference between power sigils and condi filth.

+1
I agree direct damage can be mitigated through armor and toughness, while conditions can’t be dispelled.

Liewec.2896:

direct damage can be mitigated through armour toughness and protection if the sigil was going to hit you for 2k you can mitigate it way down.
if burning is going to deal 2k damage, it is going to deal 2k damage..

You’re right. If only there were certain abilities in the game that would remove conditions before they did any damage.

Oh well.

Andy.9137:

You’re right. If only there were certain abilities in the game that would remove conditions before they did any damage.

Oh well.

oh you’re on about the 1-2 long cooldown condition removals you’ll have on your bar?
yep that’ll deal with the conditions that are getting applied by every auto attack.

use a condi removal and you’ll have 10 stacks of bleeding back in seconds.
and most condi removals won’t remove all conditions so you better hope it removes the bleeds since you’ll get burning and poison back instantly, atleast the bleeds take afew seconds to stack up.

Liewec.2896:

Andy.9137:

You’re right. If only there were certain abilities in the game that would remove conditions before they did any damage.

Oh well.

oh you’re on about the 1-2 long cooldown condition removals you’ll have on your bar?
yep that’ll deal with the conditions that are getting applied by every auto attack.

use a condi removal and you’ll have 10 stacks of bleeding back in seconds.
and most condi removals won’t remove all conditions so you better hope it removes the bleeds since you’ll get burning and poison back instantly, atleast the bleeds take afew seconds to stack up.

Unless of course, your a warrior. Then you can remove conditions all day long with a nice set of spammable cleanse. All whilst packing a huge health pool, loads of armor, and hitting giant 6k crits like it aint no thing.

Liewec.2896:

Andy.9137:

You’re right. If only there were certain abilities in the game that would remove conditions before they did any damage.

Oh well.

oh you’re on about the 1-2 long cooldown condition removals you’ll have on your bar?
yep that’ll deal with the conditions that are getting applied by every auto attack.

use a condi removal and you’ll have 10 stacks of bleeding back in seconds.
and most condi removals won’t remove all conditions so you better hope it removes the bleeds since you’ll get burning and poison back instantly, atleast the bleeds take afew seconds to stack up.

So, what’s so different about condition damage autos over direct damage autos? It’s not the bulk of the damage, and if you’re blowing your active defense/cleanses on them, you’re doing it wrong. This is true no matter who you’re facing.

You will take damage when facing players. Try keeping the fights too short for you to take enough to kill you.

Easy!

Neither Sigil of air or fire will ever show up as the top damage in dmg logg

But burning, burning even at 0 condi dmg will always be the top unavoidable damage!

google.3709:

Easy!

Neither Sigil of air or fire will ever show up as the top damage in dmg logg

But burning, burning even at 0 condi dmg will always be the top unavoidable damage!

Exactly.

Burning shows up at the top because everyone applies it. If I get focused in a teamfight, I’ll probably get hit with 3k from air sigils, 3k from fire sigils, etc, etc.

They all show up as small numbers because they’re all counted separately. But if I’ve taken 5k burning damage total from all five enemy players, that will show up at the top even if each of them only inflicted 1k burning damage apiece. Air/fire sigils could hit me for more than that, but they won’t show up at the top because they’re counted separately in the breakdown.

Even in a duel, if my opponent uses four different skills that cause burning and I take 8k burning damage, it will appear that burning did more damage than the direct damage skills—even if the direct damage skills did 3k or 4k per attack (twice as much as each burning attack).

DaliIndica.9041:

The only other changes have been complete failures anyway. Spectator mode……but only in hotjoin, which is of course known for its extremely high skill level.

New courtyard map? bury it in the game browser, hotjoin only and a whole host of limitations. Did even make a very good map if you ask me.

If they implant a ‘’Vote for Map’’ in soloque+teamque , they can direct ppl to a ’’locked’’ spvp map , so the rest of us can observe :P

And if they find a way to keep ’’hatefulls’’ maps in soloque as a ‘’beta stage’’ (that you dont care if you loose or win) , then new maps can join the’’beta stage’’ too , without showing up in the hotjoin first ;P
(but those maps are still locked behind the paying custom arena)

Both proccing together can lead to some pretty stupid burst, true.

But unlike conditions the attacks that trigger them are much easier to avoid. A thief hitting you in the face is a pretty obvious thing to avoid. A random procc worth 5000 damage (such as Dhuumfire) on a random, untelegraphed ranged attack not.

Dee Jay.2460:

Both proccing together can lead to some pretty stupid burst, true.

But unlike conditions the attacks that trigger them are much easier to avoid. A thief hitting you in the face is a pretty obvious thing to avoid. A random procc worth 5000 damage (such as Dhuumfire) on a random, untelegraphed ranged attack not.

Are you completely oblivious?

Both Dhuumfire and Sigil of Air/Fire are triggered by random, untelegraphed attacks, ranged or melee, it doesn’t matter.

Dhuumfire equated to about 2100 damage per 10 seconds.

Air/Fire total a combined 5k+ damage over 10 seconds, all of it completely random and untelegraphed, as well as fire being AoE.

lololol. You compare dhuumfire to sigils? rly?
I’ll remind you that you can have sigil too (earth/tormenting making less dmg?).
What is telegraphed in condispammers? Every skill looks same. Just wut.

Did you guys miss the update? Dhuumfire only procs from Lifeblast. Therefore the necro must be in deathshroud, which is a huge tell you know. Not to mention lifeblast is a slow projectile that can easily be avoided.

Compare that to equipping a sigil. Which can not be seen by your opponent. No icon. No buff. Nothing.

Dhuumfire also does not do 5k+ damage instantly. It’s a DOT which rarely exceeds 3k dmg as only a fool would not cleanse burning.

But please continue the condition spamming qq

I think the rage is more about burning and the access to it. It has the highest dot-damage and the application is heavily supported through passive traits and abilities (see Engineer, Elementalist, Warrior, Ranger mainly).
The easy application makes it one of the most important sources of damage. Many builds like Hambow or Kit-Engineers make it nearly impossible to cleanse burning effectively, just because it is too easy to apply at such a fast rate, while able to spam other conditions simultaneously.

Bleeding and other conditions allow counter-play and need skill to set at the right moment. Burning doesn’t (some rare active applications like Dhuumfire excluded).

Narkodx.1472:

It’s a DOT which rarely exceeds 3k dmg as only a fool would not cleanse burning.

a class like guardian can apply burning every 3 hits.
engi’s apply a 6 second burn every 10 seconds.
a class like warrior can apply burning with EVERY SINGLE AUTO ATTACK.
so which class are you playing that has condi-removal on a 1 second cooldown?

Liewec.2896:

Narkodx.1472:

It’s a DOT which rarely exceeds 3k dmg as only a fool would not cleanse burning.

a class like guardian can apply burning every 3 hits.
engi’s apply a 6 second burn every 10 seconds.
a class like warrior can apply burning with EVERY SINGLE AUTO ATTACK.
so which class are you playing that has condi-removal on a 1 second cooldown?

What kind of warrior are you playing that has burning on every attack?

Pibriamal.8719:

Liewec.2896:

Narkodx.1472:

It’s a DOT which rarely exceeds 3k dmg as only a fool would not cleanse burning.

a class like guardian can apply burning every 3 hits.
engi’s apply a 6 second burn every 10 seconds.
a class like warrior can apply burning with EVERY SINGLE AUTO ATTACK.
so which class are you playing that has condi-removal on a 1 second cooldown?

What kind of warrior are you playing that has burning on every attack?

Hambow with Stronger Bowstrings. Turns the auto attack into a double projectile finisher and turns the 2 into projectile finishers as well. Yes, that trait turns the Longbow into a combo machine (1 field, 5 finishers).

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Pibriamal.8719:

Liewec.2896:

Narkodx.1472:

It’s a DOT which rarely exceeds 3k dmg as only a fool would not cleanse burning.

a class like guardian can apply burning every 3 hits.
engi’s apply a 6 second burn every 10 seconds.
a class like warrior can apply burning with EVERY SINGLE AUTO ATTACK.
so which class are you playing that has condi-removal on a 1 second cooldown?

What kind of warrior are you playing that has burning on every attack?

Hambow with Stronger Bowstrings. Turns the auto attack into a double projectile finisher and turns the 2 into projectile finishers as well. Yes, that trait turns the Longbow into a combo machine (1 field, 5 finishers).

That’s not burning on every auto attack. And it requires the fire field from the burst, it’s not free.

Pibriamal.8719:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Pibriamal.8719:

Liewec.2896:

Narkodx.1472:

It’s a DOT which rarely exceeds 3k dmg as only a fool would not cleanse burning.

a class like guardian can apply burning every 3 hits.
engi’s apply a 6 second burn every 10 seconds.
a class like warrior can apply burning with EVERY SINGLE AUTO ATTACK.
so which class are you playing that has condi-removal on a 1 second cooldown?

What kind of warrior are you playing that has burning on every attack?

Hambow with Stronger Bowstrings. Turns the auto attack into a double projectile finisher and turns the 2 into projectile finishers as well. Yes, that trait turns the Longbow into a combo machine (1 field, 5 finishers).

That’s not burning on every auto attack. And it requires the fire field from the burst, it’s not free.

There’s setup, but it is still extremely high uptime on the “burning autos.” I never claimed that it was “every auto”, but it’s not difficult to see why it seems that way.

infantrydivEU.9670:

I find it funny how people complained so bitterly about Dhuumfire and Sun Spirit RNG procs and now we have Sigils of Air and Fire proccing for 5k+ damage every 10 seconds but since it’s power damage people think it is fine.

Why can Thief get away with running 20066 right now? Dodge all day and wait for your RNG Air/Fire procs to make up for your bad DPS.

This is just as poor of design as Dhuumfire or Incendiary Powder, yet people have deluded themselves into thinking that (for some unknown reason) power is more ‘virtuous’ than conditions

So you’re telling me that there are players with over 3600 power in sPvP? Because that’s how much it takes to hit for 5k on sigil of air alone (even more power for Sigil of Fire). Even with 25 stacks of might, this is impossible.

As for your statement about 20066, that’s simply untrue. People have always been able to get away with 20066 (I played it for well over a year before Sizer played it in ToL). If anything, the strength of Power of Inertia combined with Runes of Strength is what is making 20066 so popular right now. It has nothing to do with sigil of fire or air whatsoever. Also, since Critical Strikes is much weaker now, thieves have been turning to builds like 20066 which don’t take advantage of the Critical Strikes trait line.

As for “dodging all day”, I’d like to see you fight an S/D thief on an S/D thief. Fights like that tend to be much, much shorter than you’d expect (as long as both thieves are running Zerker amulet, which virtually every one is anyways. Even on Soldier’s, though, the fights can be extremely short).

Arganthium.5638:

infantrydivEU.9670:

I find it funny how people complained so bitterly about Dhuumfire and Sun Spirit RNG procs and now we have Sigils of Air and Fire proccing for 5k+ damage every 10 seconds but since it’s power damage people think it is fine.

Why can Thief get away with running 20066 right now? Dodge all day and wait for your RNG Air/Fire procs to make up for your bad DPS.

This is just as poor of design as Dhuumfire or Incendiary Powder, yet people have deluded themselves into thinking that (for some unknown reason) power is more ‘virtuous’ than conditions

So you’re telling me that there are players with over 3600 power in sPvP? Because that’s how much it takes to hit for 5k on sigil of air alone (even more power for Sigil of Fire). Even with 25 stacks of might, this is impossible.

As for your statement about 20066, that’s simply untrue. People have always been able to get away with 20066 (I played it for well over a year before Sizer played it in ToL). If anything, the strength of Power of Inertia combined with Runes of Strength is what is making 20066 so popular right now. It has nothing to do with sigil of fire or air whatsoever. Also, since Critical Strikes is much weaker now, thieves have been turning to builds like 20066 which don’t take advantage of the Critical Strikes trait line.

As for “dodging all day”, I’d like to see you fight an S/D thief on an S/D thief. Fights like that tend to be much, much shorter than you’d expect (as long as both thieves are running Zerker amulet, which virtually every one is anyways. Even on Soldier’s, though, the fights can be extremely short).

Are people on this thread purposely acting dumb?

Sigil of air x3 + Sigil of fire x2 = 5k+ damage over 10 seconds. These sigils are doing more damage than even Incendiary powder.

If you think an S/D thief can’t dodge all day, please watch a good thief like Sizer play before you come on here claiming any different.

Arganthium.5638:

So you’re telling me that there are players with over 3600 power in sPvP? Because that’s how much it takes to hit for 5k on sigil of air alone (even more power for Sigil of Fire). Even with 25 stacks of might, this is impossible.

According to the wiki, sigil of air has a 3 second cooldown, fire has a 5 second. So it sounds very, very possible to get 5k damage worth of procs from the two sigils over a 10-second period.

I would guess with fury and a very high crit build, a lot of might, and fast-hitting attacks, you could squeeze about .5-1k damage per second out of fire/air combined.

infantrydivEU.9670:

Are people on this thread purposely acting dumb?

Sigil of air x3 + Sigil of fire x2 = 5k+ damage over 10 seconds. These sigils are doing more damage than even Incendiary powder.

Lol chill dude, I didn’t see the part about 10 seconds.

First of all, I’d like you to tell me the last time you saw a thief running sigil of air and sigil of fire. I’ve only ever seen thieves running one or the other (including since the update to sigils/runes), not both at the same time.

Secondly (and more importantly), the probability of hitting sigil of air three times and sigil of fire twice in a given 10s period is extremely low (and technically impossible in the case of SoFire anyways) on a 20066 thief such as this one. Even assuming you had permanent fury and could get in 2 hits per second on average (which is highly unlikely), it would still take you ~1.587 additional seconds on average to activate your sigils, meaning you’d get in an average of 2.18 Lightning Strikes and 1.52 Flame Blasts per 10 seconds- and this, again, is highly optimistic, when you considered that we assumed that we would be making a total of 2 hits per second on average and had permanent fury. Plus, I’m not even sure that the meta 20066 thief runs Sigil of Agility anyways- I just put that in for the additional precision.

And anyways, in the end, anybody who runs enough power/precision and the two sigils to get 5k damage/10 seconds (assuming that’s even possible) is going to be pretty glassy anyways, and will probably go down quickly. Ironically enough, conditions are a massive weakness to S/D, as well.

This thread is two separate topics.

People have a problem with rng in general, because the outcome can be largely out of there control. In the case of high percentage ring people have less issue with that for beneficial effects.

The other topic is condi vs power. People have issues with condi, because it’s often AoE, Ranged, or both , reduces healing (poison), is passive once applied, ignores armor, ignores defensive abilities once applied ( like invulnerable) , and is therefore easy to play, low risk, and high reward.

The only thing that keeps it from being absurdly broken is that burning and Poison don’t stack in intensity when multiple ppl run condi, but all the other dots do, and it’s still broken (OP).

Might stacking and Celestial Amulet has created even more ridiculously broken scenarios where there are power condi hybrids hitting about as hard as power builds and condi builds together if not harder while having toughness, vitality, and healing power bonuses.

Arganthium.5638:

infantrydivEU.9670:

Are people on this thread purposely acting dumb?

Sigil of air x3 + Sigil of fire x2 = 5k+ damage over 10 seconds. These sigils are doing more damage than even Incendiary powder.

Lol chill dude, I didn’t see the part about 10 seconds.

First of all, I’d like you to tell me the last time you saw a thief running sigil of air and sigil of fire. I’ve only ever seen thieves running one or the other (including since the update to sigils/runes), not both at the same time.

Secondly (and more importantly), the probability of hitting sigil of air three times and sigil of fire twice in a given 10s period is extremely low (and technically impossible in the case of SoFire anyways) on a 20066 thief such as this one. Even assuming you had permanent fury and could get in 2 hits per second on average (which is highly unlikely), it would still take you ~1.587 additional seconds on average to activate your sigils, meaning you’d get in an average of 2.18 Lightning Strikes and 1.52 Flame Blasts per 10 seconds- and this, again, is highly optimistic, when you considered that we assumed that we would be making a total of 2 hits per second on average and had permanent fury. Plus, I’m not even sure that the meta 20066 thief runs Sigil of Agility anyways- I just put that in for the additional precision.

And anyways, in the end, anybody who runs enough power/precision and the two sigils to get 5k damage/10 seconds (assuming that’s even possible) is going to be pretty glassy anyways, and will probably go down quickly. Ironically enough, conditions are a massive weakness to S/D, as well.

The build which Sizer ran in ToL: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl0MpwpVOx7J8PNBNB5dY+SZ0KAdfko0XA-TZBFwACeAAl2fYxRAoaZAAnCAA

Again, even by your calculations, the proc damage from these random sigils still equals or exceeds random procs like Incendiary Powder. With luck it also has a chance to have almost twice as much damage.

The argument I’m making is that these Sigils are fundamentally the same as random Condition procs, and that if you want to talk about Incendiary Powder being bad design, you should be talking about these power based RNG damage sources as well.

In other words, I don’t care about what you perceive the state of the Thief to be in PvP, or whether or not there are is a substantial number of people running Air/Fire. I’m talking about what should be considered as smart combat design, and random damage procs aren’t part of that.

Shockwave.1230:

This thread is two separate topics.

People have a problem with rng in general, because the outcome can be largely out of there control. In the case of high percentage ring people have less issue with that for beneficial effects.

The other topic is condi vs power. People have issues with condi, because it’s often AoE, Ranged, or both , reduces healing (poison), is passive once applied, ignores armor, ignores defensive abilities once applied ( like invulnerable) , and is therefore easy to play, low risk, and high reward.

The only thing that keeps it from being absurdly broken is that burning and Poison don’t stack in intensity when multiple ppl run condi, but all the other dots do, and it’s still broken (OP).

Might stacking and Celestial Amulet has created even more ridiculously broken scenarios where there are power condi hybrids hitting about as hard as power builds and condi builds together if not harder while having toughness, vitality, and healing power bonuses.

No, this thread is not two separate topics.

This thread points out the hypocrisy of people complaining about Dhuumfire, Incendiary, Sun Spirit while not complaining about Sigil of Air/Fire which are essentially the same thing (except they have even less counterplay because they can’t be cleansed).

Shockwave.1230:

This thread is two separate topics.

People have a problem with rng in general, because the outcome can be largely out of there control. In the case of high percentage ring people have less issue with that for beneficial effects.

The other topic is condi vs power. People have issues with condi, because it’s often AoE, Ranged, or both , reduces healing (poison), is passive once applied, ignores armor, ignores defensive abilities once applied ( like invulnerable) , and is therefore easy to play, low risk, and high reward.

Does Direct damage take effort to maintain once applied? Do blocks and invulnerabilities applied after the hit reduce the damage?

Seriously, I’m curious here. Why do people treat conditions as some mythical thing in these respects when direct damage has those exact same characteristics? If anything, conditions take more effort there to maintain the damage because the damage can be reduced after the skill lands.

Arganthium.5638:

infantrydivEU.9670:

Are people on this thread purposely acting dumb?

Sigil of air x3 + Sigil of fire x2 = 5k+ damage over 10 seconds. These sigils are doing more damage than even Incendiary powder.

Lol chill dude, I didn’t see the part about 10 seconds.

First of all, I’d like you to tell me the last time you saw a thief running sigil of air and sigil of fire. I’ve only ever seen thieves running one or the other (including since the update to sigils/runes), not both at the same time.

Secondly (and more importantly), the probability of hitting sigil of air three times and sigil of fire twice in a given 10s period is extremely low (and technically impossible in the case of SoFire anyways) on a 20066 thief such as this one. Even assuming you had permanent fury and could get in 2 hits per second on average (which is highly unlikely), it would still take you ~1.587 additional seconds on average to activate your sigils, meaning you’d get in an average of 2.18 Lightning Strikes and 1.52 Flame Blasts per 10 seconds- and this, again, is highly optimistic, when you considered that we assumed that we would be making a total of 2 hits per second on average and had permanent fury. Plus, I’m not even sure that the meta 20066 thief runs Sigil of Agility anyways- I just put that in for the additional precision.

And anyways, in the end, anybody who runs enough power/precision and the two sigils to get 5k damage/10 seconds (assuming that’s even possible) is going to be pretty glassy anyways, and will probably go down quickly. Ironically enough, conditions are a massive weakness to S/D, as well.

Right, 500dps+ from air/fire is a top-end scenario. It’s not completely unlikely, though.

Air/fire combo may not even be the best for thieves, but this topic is about free damage of all kinds. Free direct damage is currently slightly higher than free condition damage, although if you count stuff like doom/geomancy as basically free damage then it’s close.

I’d like to see all kinds of free damage toned down. In return, energy sigils could be changed to grant vigor instead of instant endurance refills, so that dodge spamming wouldn’t be so effective.

The April 15th patch was good, but it had one large drawback: power creep. Every build in the entire game got significantly stronger. As a result, gameplay deteriorated. For example, spamming dodges is easier and more effective because it’s easy to equip energy and another good sigil with no cooldown interference. Glass cannons are now easier to play because even if they dodge your burst, you get more damage for free with fire/air! Whee! Everything is free—damage, dodging, might!

That’s why we need to guard against power creep.

a t s e.9614:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Shockwave.1230:

This thread is two separate topics.

People have a problem with rng in general, because the outcome can be largely out of there control. In the case of high percentage ring people have less issue with that for beneficial effects.

The other topic is condi vs power. People have issues with condi, because it’s often AoE, Ranged, or both , reduces healing (poison), is passive once applied, ignores armor, ignores defensive abilities once applied ( like invulnerable) , and is therefore easy to play, low risk, and high reward.

Does Direct damage take effort to maintain once applied? Do blocks and invulnerabilities applied after the hit reduce the damage?

Seriously, I’m curious here. Why do people treat conditions as some mythical thing in these respects when direct damage has those exact same characteristics? If anything, conditions take more effort there to maintain the damage because the damage can be reduced after the skill lands.

You don’t need to maintain anything, its damage over time. Stack conditions and watch your enemy die.

Direct damage build need to land many attaccks and even some control abilities. While a necro is just press signet of spite and GG.

Or engi autoattack to proc burn and GG.

I’d love to see you win with just pressing Signet of Spite. No landing lots of attacks, just Signet of Spite. Seriously, record it. I’d love to see the build that can manage that.

Same thing with IP engineers. I want to see a video of you winning with nothing but auto-attacks.

I’m certain you will be completely unsuccessful with either one. Heck, if successful in a non-staged fight, I will send you 100 gold in game.

a t s e.9614:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

a t s e.9614:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Shockwave.1230:

This thread is two separate topics.

People have a problem with rng in general, because the outcome can be largely out of there control. In the case of high percentage ring people have less issue with that for beneficial effects.

The other topic is condi vs power. People have issues with condi, because it’s often AoE, Ranged, or both , reduces healing (poison), is passive once applied, ignores armor, ignores defensive abilities once applied ( like invulnerable) , and is therefore easy to play, low risk, and high reward.

Does Direct damage take effort to maintain once applied? Do blocks and invulnerabilities applied after the hit reduce the damage?

Seriously, I’m curious here. Why do people treat conditions as some mythical thing in these respects when direct damage has those exact same characteristics? If anything, conditions take more effort there to maintain the damage because the damage can be reduced after the skill lands.

You don’t need to maintain anything, its damage over time. Stack conditions and watch your enemy die.

Direct damage build need to land many attaccks and even some control abilities. While a necro is just press signet of spite and GG.

Or engi autoattack to proc burn and GG.

I’d love to see you win with just pressing Signet of Spite. No landing lots of attacks, just Signet of Spite. Seriously, record it. I’d love to see the build that can manage that.

Same thing with IP engineers. I want to see a video of you winning with nothing but auto-attacks.

I’m certain you will be completely unsuccessful with either one. Heck, if successful in a non-staged fight, I will send you 100 gold in game.

I never said condi builds were good. Easy to play doesn’t mean good.

If they’re low-risk, high reward, by definition they are good. So, if they aren’t good, then they must be:

Low risk, low reward.
High risk, low reward
High risk, high reward reward
moderate risk, moderate reward

So, since we’ve established you’re full of it on this subject, I suggest you don’t bring it up again. It won’t turn out well for your credibility.

infantrydivEU.9670:

I find it funny how people complained so bitterly about Dhuumfire and Sun Spirit RNG procs and now we have Sigils of Air and Fire proccing for 5k+ damage every 10 seconds but since it’s power damage people think it is fine.

Why can Thief get away with running 20066 right now? Dodge all day and wait for your RNG Air/Fire procs to make up for your bad DPS.

This is just as poor of design as Dhuumfire or Incendiary Powder, yet people have deluded themselves into thinking that (for some unknown reason) power is more ‘virtuous’ than conditions

Huh? It is a condi meta right now. Condi rules. That’s why you see people playing that S/D spec you mention and why D/P trickery died out.

Also, you are wrong about air/fire being the reason that spec works. It works because of rune of strength. Sure, air/fire help, but without rune of strength, that spec would hit like a wet noodle.

style.6173:

Huh? It is a condi meta right now. Condi rules. That’s why you see people playing that S/D spec you mention and why D/P trickery died out.

“Condi meta” has actually never existed. The only place condition builds have ever been popular were in hotjoins and solo-que. Metas can never truly exist in a game mode that is essentially ARAM.

a t s e.9614:

And how about a random defensive proc from nightmare runes? Nobody complains about that lol.

In fairness people did try to tell ArenaNet about Nightmare runes and their response was to buff them into some kind of bizarre quasi-RNG guaranteed proc. They don’t seem to either grasp or care that because you can only make an educated guess as to what runes an opponent is using, Nightmare runes will always be basically random anyway no matter how much you fudge the proc chances.

Arganthium.5638:

infantrydivEU.9670:

Are people on this thread purposely acting dumb?

Sigil of air x3 + Sigil of fire x2 = 5k+ damage over 10 seconds. These sigils are doing more damage than even Incendiary powder.

Lol chill dude, I didn’t see the part about 10 seconds.

First of all, I’d like you to tell me the last time you saw a thief running sigil of air and sigil of fire. I’ve only ever seen thieves running one or the other (including since the update to sigils/runes), not both at the same time.

Secondly (and more importantly), the probability of hitting sigil of air three times and sigil of fire twice in a given 10s period is extremely low (and technically impossible in the case of SoFire anyways) on a 20066 thief such as this one. Even assuming you had permanent fury and could get in 2 hits per second on average (which is highly unlikely), it would still take you ~1.587 additional seconds on average to activate your sigils, meaning you’d get in an average of 2.18 Lightning Strikes and 1.52 Flame Blasts per 10 seconds- and this, again, is highly optimistic, when you considered that we assumed that we would be making a total of 2 hits per second on average and had permanent fury. Plus, I’m not even sure that the meta 20066 thief runs Sigil of Agility anyways- I just put that in for the additional precision.

And anyways, in the end, anybody who runs enough power/precision and the two sigils to get 5k damage/10 seconds (assuming that’s even possible) is going to be pretty glassy anyways, and will probably go down quickly. Ironically enough, conditions are a massive weakness to S/D, as well.

It’s more than possible, actually Air/Fire is the gold standard in Europe at the moment.

I’m not sure that conditions are that much of an issue either, there’s a solid boost in health from Acrobatics as well as Pain Response (simultaneous CC or fear-locking notwithstanding).

infantrydivEU.9670:

The build which Sizer ran in ToL: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl0MpwpVOx7J8PNBNB5dY+SZ0KAdfko0XA-TZBFwACeAAl2fYxRAoaZAAnCAA

Again, even by your calculations, the proc damage from these random sigils still equals or exceeds random procs like Incendiary Powder. With luck it also has a chance to have almost twice as much damage.

The argument I’m making is that these Sigils are fundamentally the same as random Condition procs, and that if you want to talk about Incendiary Powder being bad design, you should be talking about these power based RNG damage sources as well.

In other words, I don’t care about what you perceive the state of the Thief to be in PvP, or whether or not there are is a substantial number of people running Air/Fire. I’m talking about what should be considered as smart combat design, and random damage procs aren’t part of that.

Well, the first thing you should know about “luck” is that it can just as easily go against you. But anyways, this is two sigils we’re talking about, versus a single trait in a trait line that you’d probably want to go into in the first place (the power and condi duration in Explosives are both extremely useful- power scales better with direct damage than any other stat, at least at low levels, which we’ll presumably be talking on if we’re talking about a condi build which doesn’t require great investment into direct damage stats).

That’s going to make the two fundamentally different in the first place, depending on how you value traits versus sigils. Personally, I think the ability to be able to invest into powerful stats (no pun intended) while getting pretty great traits at the same time gives Incendiary Powder a slight edge in terms of convenience over the two sigils. Some other classes, such as thief, guardian, and ranger, don’t get these benefits, and for others (such as mesmer, and possibly elementalist and nowadays necro) the ability to invest in the strong first trait line only provides strong traits to certain types of builds.

Also, an engineer can use sigils (even sigil of air and sigil of fire, since an engi that invests into Incendiary Powder is going to want to have lots of precision and will naturally have at least a little bit of power) on top of Incendiary Powder, whereas many other builds don’t get that natural extra damage from their traits. There are obviously exceptions, but they’re just exceptions and not the rule.

As for “random damage procs” not being able to be considered “smart combat design”, remember that virtually all direct damage in the game is randomized; when damage is being dealt, a random number is generated based on the weapon coefficient range listed on your weapon. Furthermore, we could average the amount of damage done by fire and air sigils across all fights, and simply add that average damage to the average damage done by direct damage and conditions per second across all fights and as a result sigils are nothing more than a small addition to your DPS. So I’m not really sure why random damage procs shouldn’t be considered smart design, since all they really are are additions to the average amount of direct damage dealt by a player (as far as the air and fire sigils go, anyways), unless you’re saying that the entire direct damage system is flawed in the first place.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Right, 500dps+ from air/fire is a top-end scenario. It’s not completely unlikely, though.

Air/fire combo may not even be the best for thieves, but this topic is about free damage of all kinds. Free direct damage is currently slightly higher than free condition damage, although if you count stuff like doom/geomancy as basically free damage then it’s close.

I’d like to see all kinds of free damage toned down. In return, energy sigils could be changed to grant vigor instead of instant endurance refills, so that dodge spamming wouldn’t be so effective.

The April 15th patch was good, but it had one large drawback: power creep. Every build in the entire game got significantly stronger. As a result, gameplay deteriorated. For example, spamming dodges is easier and more effective because it’s easy to equip energy and another good sigil with no cooldown interference. Glass cannons are now easier to play because even if they dodge your burst, you get more damage for free with fire/air! Whee! Everything is free—damage, dodging, might!

That’s why we need to guard against power creep.

Well, 0 DPS is also a low-end possibility from fire and air sigils.

Well, when you take into account some of the secondary effects of conditions, and the fact that conditions often come together/close together and are ultimately very difficult to avoid (as opposed to bursts, which are generally easier protect yourself against), and that you have to counter conditions in small groups (since lots of condi clears don’t clear all of your conditions, and even when they are all cleansed, you have to be prepared to face another wave of condis), the amounts of damage might not be so relevant.

I’m not sure why fire/air sigils are considered “free damage”. Actually, I’m not sure what “free damage” is supposed to mean in the first place to be honest.

I might be wrong (but I’m pretty sure I’m not), but even pre-patch I don’t think that energy sigils conflicted with air/fire sigils because energy is an on-swap sigil and air/fire are on-crit sigils.

shimmerless.4560:

It’s more than possible, actually Air/Fire is the gold standard in Europe at the moment.

I’m not sure that conditions are that much of an issue either, there’s a solid boost in health from Acrobatics as well as Pain Response (simultaneous CC or fear-locking notwithstanding).

Well, I’ve been away from the game for a bit, so I wouldn’t have known that tbh.

Pain Response (like all “X effect when you hit Y% health” traits) is somewhat overrated due to its one-trick pony-like effect. It’s not going to be good enough to counter conditions for long. Plus, PR doesn’t clear three of the condis that can entirely wreck its playstyle- weakness, chill, and cripple.

shimmerless.4560:

Arganthium.5638:

shimmerless.4560:

It’s more than possible, actually Air/Fire is the gold standard in Europe at the moment.

I’m not sure that conditions are that much of an issue either, there’s a solid boost in health from Acrobatics as well as Pain Response (simultaneous CC or fear-locking notwithstanding).

Well, I’ve been away from the game for a bit, so I wouldn’t have known that tbh.

Pain Response (like all “X effect when you hit Y% health” traits) is somewhat overrated due to its one-trick pony-like effect. It’s not going to be good enough to counter conditions for long. Plus, PR doesn’t clear three of the condis that can entirely wreck its playstyle- weakness, chill, and cripple.

If you are playing sword I am going to assume you are taking Withdraw (movement clear) and not HiS :-P

Yeah, but Withdraw still doesn’t clear weakness. Either way, though, a couple of seconds of cripple or chill (and chill is usually pretty short anyways) can be enough to screw over a good sword thief.