Guild Wars 2

NevirSayDie.6235:

cut

Bonus burst damage and bonus condition damage are two different beasts.

Condition damage bonus stacks up with the other conditions and works as a cover to them too. That means that if you proc Sigil of Fire, it doesn’t mean that the other attacks are most likely landing.

Condition damage doesn’t require active partecipation to the player in order to archieve the maximum damage output. Once the burning procs once, you can forget about it. You can be CCed, blinded, dodging or play defensively if needed and still dealing damage.

Conditions requires only condition damage as stat, while burst needs power, precision and critical damage to be effective, meaning that burst profession will be most likely more glassy and so attacking to keep the proc-rate high is more risky.

In particular, Sigil of Fire is more effective on the hypothetical situation that you manage to land it on multiple enemies. Dhuumfire and IR deals way higher single target damage.

A more proper comparison with Sigil of Fire would be Sigil of Earth, not Dhuumfire nor IR.

sorrow.2364:

NevirSayDie.6235:

cut

Bonus burst damage and bonus condition damage are two different beasts.

Condition damage bonus stacks up with the other conditions and works as a cover to them too. That means that if you proc Sigil of Fire, it doesn’t mean that the other attacks are most likely landing.

Condition damage doesn’t require active partecipation to the player in order to archieve the maximum damage output. Once the burning procs once, you can forget about it. You can be CCed, blinded, dodging or play defensively if needed and still dealing damage.

Conditions requires only condition damage as stat, while burst needs power, precision and critical damage to be effective, meaning that burst profession will be most likely more glassy and so attacking to keep the proc-rate high is more risky.

In particular, Sigil of Fire is more effective on the hypothetical situation that you manage to land it on multiple enemies. Dhuumfire and IR deals way higher single target damage.

A more proper comparison with Sigil of Fire would be Sigil of Earth, not Dhuumfire nor IR.

I felt of my chair laughing about the thing you wrote.

Your arguments absolutly make no sense. They are both on crit effects, they deal both bonus damage. To deal this damage I have to land an critical hit. The diference is, one makes his damage instant, the other one over 4 seconds and can be cleansed or blocked by another burn.

That you think conditions are fire and forget, you should be banned from every discussion of balancing conditions. You have no idea of how conditions work. You can compare them with an direct damage atack, but with two differences:

• they ignore thoughness
• they deal their damage over time so there is a delay

got it?

I could start with some examples of an auto atack of necro scepter that deals about 1-2k (3-4 with dhuumfire) dmg, but I dont think you would understand the math.

There seems to be a huge problem in general with how conditions are perceived by players and even some developers. Whenever removing bleed cap is brought up, someone always says that 25 condition necromancers stacking hundreds of bleeds would be insane. But the very obvious counter-point is that 25 condition necromancer stacking hundreds of bleeds sounds no worse — in fact, it actually sounds better — than 25 thieves backstabbing or 25 warriors dropping stuns and Hundred Blades.

true story.

Conditions seems to be like witches in the early ages and they need to burn on a pyre. Just because they don’t know how it works it is evil and therefor OP.

unleashed.8679:

1. if 4s dhummfire is OP and 2sec is UP, it should be balanced with 3sec -> problem solved
2. IP is a minor trait so this would be fine with 2sec -> solved
3. Sun spirit? as you said perma blind for the whole team, would be fine too, he can still burn with a torch -> solved

Thread can be closed

And to your Hybrid build: you have a hard counter and it is called tank. Your conditions are to weak and direct damage is highly reduced. And your also have no defense, because you need 5 stats to be effective and there is no place for defense. Only thing that could work would be the “+ x to all stats” armor. But i don’t think it will be effective.

The problem is that those traits are not OP. Sun spirit is the only one of those traits/skills that is taken regularly by top teams, and that’s because spirit ranger offers a lot in general, not just burning.

sorrow.2364:

NevirSayDie.6235:

cut

Bonus burst damage and bonus condition damage are two different beasts.

Condition damage bonus stacks up with the other conditions and works as a cover to them too. That means that if you proc Sigil of Fire, it doesn’t mean that the other attacks are most likely landing.

Condition damage doesn’t require active partecipation to the player in order to archieve the maximum damage output. Once the burning procs once, you can forget about it. You can be CCed, blinded, dodging or play defensively if needed and still dealing damage.

Conditions requires only condition damage as stat, while burst needs power, precision and critical damage to be effective, meaning that burst profession will be most likely more glassy and so attacking to keep the proc-rate high is more risky.

In particular, Sigil of Fire is more effective on the hypothetical situation that you manage to land it on multiple enemies. Dhuumfire and IR deals way higher single target damage.

A more proper comparison with Sigil of Fire would be Sigil of Earth, not Dhuumfire nor IR.

Sigil of fire deals more single target damage if it procs more than once per 10 seconds or if part of the burn is wasted. Let’s say that sigil of fire procs on average every 8 seconds for 1000 damage to a single target (not unreasonable). That’s a sustained dps increase of exactly 120/sec.

Let’s say dhuumfire procs every 11 seconds, or exactly on cooldown. A 2-second burn is about 1200 damage. That’s a sustained dps increase of 109/sec.

I’m not talking about active participation. You don’t have to have active participation to get a sigil of fire proc, either. Conditions don’t do inherently more damage because they are dots; it only seems that they do more damage if you get a lot of them on you at the same time. A 2-second burn will never do more than about 1200 damage, unless you have crazy might stacks. That’s no different from a power attack that does 1200 damage.

IP is longer than dhuumfire but in real-life situations, cleansing, wasting on already-burning targets, and wasting on npc’s will cut its damage drastically. Likewise, if sigil of fire ever hits two targets, it will instantly do as much damage as IP in perfect scenarios. 1000 damage instantly is also better than 1000 damage over time; for example, vs. a regen warrior, perma burning and 1-4 stacks of bleed, if never cleansed, would just keep pace with healing signet, adrenal health and banner regen, depending on healing power/condition damage values—just because it would take 1 second for the burn/bleed to inflict their damage. In that same period of time, the warrior would regen the same amount of damage.

Edit: oh and sigil of earth is horrible. Given +30% condi duration and 100% crit chance, it would still only put out less than 200 single target dps. With 50% crit chance you’d be looking at a flat increase of maybe 95dps, single target, cleansable. If any of those bleed stacks get cleansed, you’re looking at something like an increase of 50 damage per second.

Lopez.7369:

A team built around countering conditions would fall over to the one or two power builds in the typical team. That’s why the meta balances out to balanced comps in the end. That’s sort of what I’m getting at by pointing out hybrid builds are worthless. (Keep in mind that, with the way stats scale in the game, hybrid builds are not just 50 percent power and condition. They’re actually more like 30 percent power and 40 percent condition.)

I actually explained exactly how a condition necromancer deals with warriors just fine. It’s all about keeping range and maintaining cooldowns for when the warrior does get close.

The problem is most necromancers seem to smash their cooldowns, including Death Shroud, and have terrible positioning. You see this even in tournaments, where practically every necromancer spends half the match getting focused or dead because, for whatever reason, they all run into melee range. (One high-rated necromancer once called this his “play style” in a podcast, which made absolutely no sense. A ranged class’s play style can’t be constantly forfeiting the biggest advantage it has.)

That’s not to say there aren’t good times to piano cooldowns and run into melee range, but treading carefully when a warrior is around is a good idea.

That’s also not to say that warriors couldn’t use a few tweaks. Berserker Stance could be reduced to 6 seconds without traits. I also think they should revisit the concept of Berserker Stance and Automated Response only reducing condition duration by 100 percent, not granting immunity altogether.

But the notion that warriors make the game impossible is more a fault in perception and skill than reality.

Dhuumfire is absolutely taken in every high-end condition build, and it’s not just the 30-point trait and condition duration. It’s also Signet Mastery and Chill of Death, which are amazing traits by themselves. (Some people also point to the power and Death into Life, but I think both of those are too small to consider.)

As an aside, do you really not consider higher-rated players experiences when shaping your opinions and perspective? I know that if I played mesmer, I would absolutely consider Supcutie’s opinion as superior to mine. If I played engineer, I would look to Ostrich Eggs and my husband. And on and on. I’m not really sure how anyone couldn’t approach higher-rated players in that way unless egos are getting in the way.

I prefer to leave the hybrid build topic away, since we are going too deep into the theorycrafting spiral, leading to nothing.

What you explained to be a counter to Warriors, well, it’s not. Of course every profession is insanely survivable if it’s at safe distance under the focus of none, but that is not a valid argument, at all.
If a Warrior wants to focus the Necromancer, he will. There is no way to properly create a gap with a warrior, because of Earthshaker being a snare-ignoring leap and the constant condition removals through Longbow and Hammer. The only tools Necromancer have to create a gap is through slowing down the enemy, which is something that warriors are pretty much immune to.

I’m not saying that Warriors make the game impossible to Necromancers, I’m saying that they make the game hard to the point that it’s not worth to run them anymore. Going Engineer or Ranger is a way safer choice.

About Spite: going in that traitline means giving up on Greater Marks and Banshee’s Wail. Quite a big loss considering that the only gain is Chill of Death and Signet Mastery for Signet of Spite only.

About opinions: I think I have a brain and I am supposed to use it. If someone says something which makes sense to me, I take that as valid regardless of who is saying that thing. Humanity has gone over the “ipse dixit” philosophy in the middle age.

whyme.3281:

I felt of my chair laughing about the thing you wrote.

Your arguments absolutly make no sense. They are both on crit effects, they deal both bonus damage. To deal this damage I have to land an critical hit. The diference is, one makes his damage instant, the other one over 4 seconds and can be cleansed or blocked by another burn.

That you think conditions are fire and forget, you should be banned from every discussion of balancing conditions. You have no idea of how conditions work. You can compare them with an direct damage atack, but with two differences:

• they ignore thoughness
• they deal their damage over time so there is a delay

got it?

I could start with some examples of an auto atack of necro scepter that deals about 1-2k (3-4 with dhuumfire) dmg, but I dont think you would understand the math.

Going arrogant and aggressive won’t make your arguments more valuable. I’m just ignoring you from now on.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Sigil of fire deals more single target damage if it procs more than once per 10 seconds or if part of the burn is wasted. Let’s say that sigil of fire procs on average every 8 seconds for 1000 damage to a single target (not unreasonable). That’s a sustained dps increase of exactly 120/sec.

Let’s say dhuumfire procs every 11 seconds, or exactly on cooldown. A 2-second burn is about 1200 damage. That’s a sustained dps increase of 109/sec.

I’m not talking about active participation. You don’t have to have active participation to get a sigil of fire proc, either. Conditions don’t do inherently more damage because they are dots; it only seems that they do more damage if you get a lot of them on you at the same time. A 2-second burn will never do more than about 1200 damage, unless you have crazy might stacks. That’s no different from a power attack that does 1200 damage.

IP is longer than dhuumfire but in real-life situations, cleansing, wasting on already-burning targets, and wasting on npc’s will cut its damage drastically. Likewise, if sigil of fire ever hits two targets, it will instantly do as much damage as IP in perfect scenarios. 1000 damage instantly is also better than 1000 damage over time; for example, vs. a regen warrior, perma burning and 1-4 stacks of bleed, if never cleansed, would just keep pace with healing signet, adrenal health and banner regen, depending on healing power/condition damage values—just because it would take 1 second for the burn/bleed to inflict their damage. In that same period of time, the warrior would regen the same amount of damage.

Edit: oh and sigil of earth is horrible. Given +30% condi duration and 100% crit chance, it would still only put out less than 200 single target dps. With 50% crit chance you’d be looking at a flat increase of maybe 95dps, single target, cleansable. If any of those bleed stacks get cleansed, you’re looking at something like an increase of 50 damage per second.

You are comparing single target damage with multiple target damage too easily.
Single target and multiple target damage can’t be compared directly, there are so many variables to take into consideration that you can’t just sum the damage you would do on multiple targets and compare it to the damage dealt to a single target.

You are assuming that conditions are cleansed right after they are applied. That’s not the case as I’ve pointed out multiple times. Burning is applied once every 10-11s, which means that the chances that it is covered right after it procs are extremely high, meaning that it is fairly easy that it will last for the whole duration.

As I’ve already pointed out, a comparison of burst damage and damage over time can’t be made so easily.
There are so many dead times in which burst profession is not dealing damage while condition is. A dodge, for instance, is a 3/4 of dead time. A stun is another 1-2s of dead time. An healing skill cast is another dead time.
In those dead time, burning is still taking effects while Sigil of Fire is not proccing.

And this is just one of the multiple reasons of why direct comparison with burst damage makes no sense. Another reason is, in fact, condition cleansing. Another is the fact that burst professions are way more glassy. Another reason is that condition damage stacks with previous applied conditions, while burst damage is linear.

sorrow.2364:

…

Proper positioning isn’t just about keeping a gap. It’s also about dragging opponents into bad spots. So that warrior might be able to get on the necromancer whenever he wants, but if the necromancer is smart, that will also involve dragging him into other teammates. It could also involve pulling him behind some sort of pillar or wall, where a necromancer can easily kill a warrior uninterrupted.

Greater Marks and Bashee’s Wail are worse than Chill of Death and probably Signet Mastery. (Most would prefer Master of Corruption if they went 30 points into Curses, anyway. Not that many condition necromancers use warhorn in the first place.)

Anyway, the basis for this thread has been thoroughly debunked. I think the developers also understand that conditions are settling in a good spot, so it’s just a matter of shaving warriors and perhaps spirit rangers at this point. No excessive changes to the fundamentals are necessary.

It is bad that you aren’t listening to whyme anymore, because he is right. There are so many examples in here, that show that condition damage has a lot of disadvantages against direct damage and the damage output is smaller and you think it they are all not comparable, but they are.

Where is the difference between hitting you with instant 3k or hit you with 500 + 2,5k over 5s from conditions? Both deals 3k damage while the conditions can be cleansed, you have more time to heal yourself, …

The only difference is there are not much attacks that apply such strong conditions. Where a lot of power builds are able to hit with 3k and more every second.

Lopez.7369:

sorrow.2364:

…

Proper positioning isn’t just about keeping a gap. It’s also about dragging opponents into bad spots. So that warrior might be able to get on the necromancer whenever he wants, but if the necromancer is smart, that will also involve dragging him into other teammates. It could also involve pulling him behind some sort of pillar or wall, where a necromancer can easily kill a warrior uninterrupted.

Greater Marks and Bashee’s Wail are worse than Chill of Death and probably Signet Mastery. (Most would prefer Master of Corruption if they went 30 points into Curses, anyway. Not that many condition necromancers use warhorn in the first place.)

Anyway, the basis for this thread has been thoroughly debunked. I also think the developers also understand that conditions are settling in a good spot, so it’s just a matter of shaving warriors and perhaps spirit rangers at this point. No excessive changes to the fundamentals are necessary.

Dragging a warrior on other teammates does not mean losing the focus. Warrior is usually a low-priority target because it is far from squishy.
As I’ve said, losing the focus of a Warriors is hard to impossible and I’ve explained skill-wise and trait-wise why I’m saying that. You, on the other hand, look quite vague about those counters to Warriors.

Greater Marks and Banshee’s Wail being worse than Chill of Death and Signet Mastery is a matter of opinions. Having unblockable marks is a great gain, as much as having higher Locust Swarm uptime (to have proper LF generation).

Conditions aren’t in a good spot. There are only 3 professions with viable condition builds over 8 available professions, in which one of them is arguably on the OP side. I wouldn’t call it “good spot”.

I’m OK with you not getting how to counter warriors as a necromancer. Not every player is going to have the skill or knowledge to deal with the class.

But it is sad how defeatist your mentality appears to be. I’m curious how you justify higher-rated players succeeding where you apparently cannot.

I agree that other classes’ condition builds need to be brought up to par with rangers, engineers and necromancers. Maybe they need more traits like Dhuumfire to help.

unleashed.8679:

It is bad that you aren’t listening to whyme anymore, because he is right. There are so many examples in here, that show that condition damage has a lot of disadvantages against direct damage and the damage output is smaller and you think it they are all not comparable, but they are.

Where is the difference between hitting you with instant 3k or hit you with 500 + 2,5k over 5s from conditions? Both deals 3k damage while the conditions can be cleansed, you have more time to heal yourself, …

The only difference is there are not much attacks that apply such strong conditions. Where a lot of power builds are able to hit with 3k and more every second.

This is just not true.
Hitting for 3k every second reliably is pure fantasy in real situations, while hitting for 500+2.5k every 2 seconds or so is much more possible with conditions.

Lopez.7369:

I’m OK with you not getting how to counter warriors as a necromancer. Not every player is going to have the skill or knowledge to deal with the class. It is sad how defeatist your mentality appears to be, however. I’m just curious how you justify higher-rated players succeeding where you apparently cannot.

I agree that other classes’ condition builds need to be brought up to par with rangers, engineers and necromancers. Maybe they need more traits like Dhuumfire to help.

Lmao, yes let’s just further buff other classes to be even more easy and faceroll with terribly designed traits like Dhuumfire.

It’s suggestions like this that ruined this game in the first place. For the love of god Anet don’t listen to this.

Lopez.7369:

I’m OK with you not getting how to counter warriors as a necromancer. Not every player is going to have the skill or knowledge to deal with the class. It is sad how defeatist your mentality appears to be, however. I’m just curious how you justify higher-rated players succeeding where you apparently cannot.

I agree that other classes’ condition builds need to be brought up to par with rangers, engineers and necromancers. Maybe they need more traits like Dhuumfire to help.

Right, I think we finished here with you calling me unskilled and you being the good player succeeding because of arcane magic tricks and pillar-dragging positioning.

I justify higher-rated players succeeding because, luckly enough, PvP is not yet only about warriors, but the trend is going that way.
Last tournament showed where PvP is going and there is no “positioning” or “cooldowns” to deny that.

Are you seriously OK with adding more automated condition spam professions into the game? Wasn’t that the reason of why half of the decent competitive teams of this game has left?

There are 4 good condition classes: you forgot the warrior
warrior has a really strong condition build (probably stronger then necro single target)

I am not sure about mesmer and ele, because i don’t have one, but
Confusion mesmer shouldn’t be that bad and ele should have access to a lot of conditions.

Guardian is bad, because he only has bleeds as far as I know.

@sorrow:
I hit the enemy or i miss him, it doesn’t matter, what damage type I use.

A few teams left for different reasons, but the biggest reason they left is because they got bored. They justified their leave with all sorts of reasons, but that’s the root of the problem.

Every game has procs. There’s nothing wrong with them as long as they don’t overtake active play, which they haven’t at all in the case of engineer or necromancer. Spirit rangers are obviously a whole different story, but that’s related more to AI than conditions.

For everyone lamenting about Necromancers being helplessly crushed in 1v1’s against Warriors, I don’t have too much sympathy to be quite honest.

In the vVv Tournament – Kings of the Mist on Saturday, Karmy, the Necromancer for the Japanese team Strange World assaulted far point successfully against team Good Fight’s Hammer/Longbow warrior, beating him and temporarily full capping it.

Necros built for 1v1s are strong. Karmy ran Corrupt Boon, Plague Signet, Flesh Wurm, and Flesh Golem.

Was he conditions? I’ll have to check that out if there’s a video. Do you have a link?

Necromancers are soft countered by warriors in group fights, but they don’t lose to them in one-on-one situations.

Lopez.7369:

Was he conditions? I’ll have to check that out if there’s a video. Do you have a link?

Necromancers are soft countered by warriors in group fights, but they don’t lose to them in one-on-one situations.

Unfortunately it was the first round, and it wasn’t Shoutcasted. Condition build, yep.

sorrow.2364:

You are comparing single target damage with multiple target damage too easily.
Single target and multiple target damage can’t be compared directly, there are so many variables to take into consideration that you can’t just sum the damage you would do on multiple targets and compare it to the damage dealt to a single target.

You are assuming that conditions are cleansed right after they are applied. That’s not the case as I’ve pointed out multiple times. Burning is applied once every 10-11s, which means that the chances that it is covered right after it procs are extremely high, meaning that it is fairly easy that it will last for the whole duration.

As I’ve already pointed out, a comparison of burst damage and damage over time can’t be made so easily.
There are so many dead times in which burst profession is not dealing damage while condition is. A dodge, for instance, is a 3/4 of dead time. A stun is another 1-2s of dead time. An healing skill cast is another dead time.
In those dead time, burning is still taking effects while Sigil of Fire is not proccing.

And this is just one of the multiple reasons of why direct comparison with burst damage makes no sense. Another reason is, in fact, condition cleansing. Another is the fact that burst professions are way more glassy. Another reason is that condition damage stacks with previous applied conditions, while burst damage is linear.

Actually the quote you responded to didn’t mention anything having to do with single vs. multiple target damage, merely that sigil of fire easily deals more unavoidable bonus damage to a single target than dhuumfire can, even in perfect conditions (no cleansing, wasting, etc).

Dodging/etc doesn’t change the damage at all. Let’s say I put a 3000 damage burn on you and then dodge, heal, dodge, and block. Then let’s say I hit you for 3000 damage with a power attack and then dodge, heal, dodge, and block. Both times, I’ve done 3000 damage.

Been saying for months necros shouldn’t lose 1v1s to warriors. It’s team fights where they mess you up. Well, when built that way anyway. I prefer spectral walk over flesh wurm for that particular encounter, since you can stunbreak then teleport instead of stunbreak and teleport, giving you a bit more flexibility in how far you teleport and potentially getting you out of two separate stuns. After months of hating on it, I’ve come to the point where I now think it is the strongest personal survivability tool necros have.

I usually run well of power to stunbreak these days though, and just blast off it vs warriors for an extra blind to somewhat make up for the lack of a teleport. You give up the weakness from poison blast but weakness is surprisingly irrelevant for the matchup. If they’re hitting you you’re probably boned anyway. The well is a little less effective for you personally, but helps your team more when you’re not the target, and is situationally better anyway.

The blind on plague signet is the main thing though. It pushes you past a kind of CC threshold, allowing you to kite/blind/dodge/stunbreak/teleport for long enough that they die before they can chain stuns into you and shut you out from using any of your defenses.

The reason they destroy you in team fights is one CC/snare from one of their teammates, or using one of your defensive abilities on anything except the warrior puts you below that threshold again, and suddenly you’re a punching bag, unless your teammates are babysitting you hard. Considering your shortest CD blind is also your shortest CD cleanse, they don’t even need to use CCs or snares to force you to use abilities that would otherwise keep you alive against warriors, they can just put condis on you, putting you into a kitten ed if you do, kitten ed if you don’t situation. If you don’t cleanse weakness you’re dead, if you use your blind on an autoattack you’re dead.

The problem with the matchup is that it’s so heavy on the control elements. The necro is either not being hit, or dead in seconds.

I agree with most of that analysis, except I prefer Spectral Armor.

Lopez.7369:

I agree with most of that analysis, except I prefer Spectral Armor.

So did I for many months, but I’ve pulled off some ridiculous things with spectral walk. Z-axis mobility is just so strong. The only time I slot spectral armor now is when I go full troll because my team is full of warriors and guardians and I’m the only viable target. Spectral armor, spectral walk, well of power, run like hell while my team kills stuff :P