Guild Wars 2

yeaa.. conditions were errwhere before the patch, but they weren’t the only thing.

jumped into hotjoin for the first time since the patch over the weekend, and all i ever died to? bleeding and burning. mainly these two conditions.

I doubt it but let’s just hope the patch today might actually change something and tone things down a little…

Ceraldor.3160:

I doubt it but let’s just hope the patch today might actually change something and tone things down a little…

aaah… sweet naive hope

We need a Boon that reduces condi duration by x amount for a limited duration. I think adding it to protection might make it too strong, but a reduction of conditions by 25%-33% for 5 seconds is definitely needed. Warrior Berserker Stance reduces all conditions by 100% for 4 seconds. Unfortunately it’s on a 60 second cd. Once those 4 seconds are up, those conditions will pile right back up. Engineer Automated Response reduces condition duration by 100% when you fall below 25% hp. I think this is a great trait, but unfortunately you have to dedicate a full 30 points to pick it up.

Right now verses a Necromancer, I can have all the condi removal in the world, change my tactics, dodge whatever I can, but still end up getting eaten alive. Doesn’t matter if I have Melandru runes, Cleansing Ire, Signet of Stamina, Stability, Mending, and Endure Pain. I liked the idea of Necro burning being applied every 5th attack and only lasting 2-3 seconds. Burning does too much damage from RNG traits like Dhuumfire and Incendiary Powder.

akamon.2769:

yeaa.. conditions were errwhere before the patch, but they weren’t the only thing.

jumped into hotjoin for the first time since the patch over the weekend, and all i ever died to? bleeding and burning. mainly these two conditions.

I think there is a bug with the death information tab. It always shows bleeds on top (even versus classes that barely uses bleeds). Though I think the burn values are accurate.

Boon hate is a good idea but might not be easy to balance. The simplest solution is making toughness reduce condition damage (or duration whatever) in a smaller manner than with power attacks. Since vitality affects power attacks to a smaller degree than toughness, why should the reverse not be true.

The cleansing/-duration runes and food are poor arguments. Cleansing should rival stunbreaks in utility slots. Right now, if I see more than 1 necro in a game I will just swap most (if not all) stunbreaks to cleansers since cleanse can remove fear as well.

tarcheg.4872:

Now let’s have a look at cond classes. One might argue that you can do the same with cond classes. Dodge the confusion bomb, dodge in necro marks etc. But:
first – cond classes in general do not rely on one heavy burst like a bs thief, 100b warrior, ele, mesmer – they are able to have a much higher sustain dmg output to melt targets over a couple second rather than killing it in half a second.
second – and this is the really broken aspect imo: Engis and Necros (the two used cond classes atm) have a trait which gives them their most dmg on a proc. It’s like a thief trait which gives him every 10s a bs on a proc. Burning is the one condition a class needs to have an effective condition spec. Burning is where most of the dmg comes from. And there srsly is a trait which gives you 60% burning up time (4s + cond duration / every nec/engi has at least 50% burning duration) on a proc.
Let me explain why it is op to have your main dmg coming from a proc. It’s pretty simple. Did you ever try to dodge a proc? Or to blind it? Or evade it with anything else??? It’s just not possible. Let’s say you know that the icd of his burning trait is off so you dodge his next attack to avoid the burning application. What does this do? You get no dmg during the time you evade, BUT his main dmg source did not go on a cd and most likely you will be burned for 6s with his next attack. There just is no way to effectively evade the burning. This is a huge different when compared to how power classes do their main dmg and to be honest – this is intolerable in a game in which “skill” is evading the attacks which hurt you the most.
Ofc all necros and engis will say now, that we have cond removal to counter them. But what many people forget is, that some classes just simply have no access to cond removal like mesmer and others just don’t pay off.
Let’s look at the current meta in which cond removal plays a huge part. We pretty much always have a mesmer with 0 cond removal. Than there is most likely an ele with very limited cond removal (see my statement at the top about ele and cond removal) we got an engi with limited cond removal (2 every ~17s ae) and a necro who has 0 cond removal but cond transferring – but transferring does not take conds out of the game. The general feeling of how conds rule the game atm is not reduced by transferring them to the enemy team. On the opposite – the other team will feel even more screwed by conds. Only the guard has atm reasonable access to cond removal with his shout build.
In addition there are very few runes with -cond duration which are almost not used in the current meta.
As it seems, the last patches have shifted the meta in the condition direction a huge step. The contras for pwer classes outshine the contras for cond classes – which is pretty much only cond removal – by far and the meta is representing that fact by team comp consisting of 1 bunker guard, 2 necro, 1 engi and a mesmer (mostly because portal and iol are still just a must have).

I wanna say at the end, that this is not a necro op thread. Or an engi op thread. This thread just wants to outline the general disadvantages of any power class compared to cond applying classes.

Good post. Let just added a couple of more things.

1. Chill, cripple are perfect counter to melee power attacks, but does not counter cond attack at all. Reflection counters rifle burst but not to grenade or mark spam. Blindness counters all power attacks but nope to marks or wells. Blocking doesn’t counter marks. Cond ticks under invul and distortion….. In general there are more counters to direct dmg than to cond dmg. Only reliable counter to cond is dodge the source or cleanse. When u have to rely on utility skill cleanse, I never could understand how cleanse can be op against cond spam.

2. The major condition source in meta are ranged aoe, which is already a big advantage meaning you don’t have to take as much risk melee players takes but the reward is significantly bigger.

3. IMHO giving a aoe cond heavy, cc heavy class ability to burst is outright cirminal. It skews the balance even further till the end. When u under cc’ed cond burst, you are in the need for big amount of cleanse from utility skills, none class not even guardian in shout spec can pop out enough cleanse for that.

Just look at Power Warrior and Condi Necro, how many times did they buff Warrior and how many time did they buff Necro? And who actually got the Cake?

Excellent post. I’ve played a PP Engineer since the game launched, though I do also play a Trap Ranger a lot (though only casually, as in hotjoin only) and I do agree that right now conditions are over the top. In general, there is just far too little condi removal, and too many of the games defensive mechanics work well against power yet do little/nothing against condition damage.

noobftw.9654:

Good post. Let just added a couple of more things.

1. Chill, cripple are perfect counter to melee power attacks, but does not counter cond attack at all. Reflection counters rifle burst but not to grenade or mark spam. Blindness counters all power attacks but nope to marks or wells. Blocking doesn’t counter marks. Cond ticks under invul and distortion….. In general there are more counters to direct dmg than to cond dmg. Only reliable counter to cond is dodge the source or cleanse. When u have to rely on utility skill cleanse, I never could understand how cleanse can be op against cond spam.

2. The major condition source in meta are ranged aoe, which is already a big advantage meaning you don’t have to take as much risk melee players takes but the reward is significantly bigger.

3. IMHO giving a aoe cond heavy, cc heavy class ability to burst is outright cirminal. It skews the balance even further till the end. When u under cc’ed cond burst, you are in the need for big amount of cleanse from utility skills, none class not even guardian in shout spec can pop out enough cleanse for that.

Exactly. I just do not understand the whole “but condition damage is nullified if you cleanse” argument from players who like the condition meta. Cleanses are generally utility skills or niche traits while conditions are getting applied from lower cd weapon skills.

I just have a problem with two things in this game right now.

1 – AOE conditions. They should not be as powerful as single target counterparts. Marks/Grenades need bigger cds or shorter durations on conditions.
A Mark/Grenade build should not destroy things in 1v1 situations.

2 – Condition builds that burst you in under 5 seconds. If we really do not want any changes to conditions/cleanses etc then the design idea that conditions need ramp up should be reinforced. I do not see the ramp up when I lose over half hp in a single 2-3 second fear. How is that ramp up?