Guild Wars 2

Why are crits unaffected by weakness?

I’ve never quite understood the logic here – GC’s are the build you’d most want to hit with weakness, yet they are the least affected by it. It seems like the condition was made to punish people who decide to go hybrid – the more crit% you sacrifice for survivability stats, the more potential weakness has to shut you down.

Maybe the numbers would have to be split (one damage reduction % for non-crits, and another for crits), but does anyone else feel weakness should reduce damage dealt for all attacks?

There is already a mechanic that reduces damage on all attacks: protection. Chill also fulfills this purpose in a way.
If weakness affected all attacks it would be redundant and would be boring.

No1 cares about the dmg-reduction effect of Weakness, because it’s basically non-existant, because:

- Most DPS-classes have about 50% crit-chance, so at 50% of attacks, it won’t do anything. (50% chance)
- Then, the 50% of non-crits have a 50% chance to be affected by it (25% chance)
- Then, those 25% deal 50% less DMG (12.5 % DMG-Reduction)

But wait, that wasn’t all, because the 50% of hits that can be affected by weakness aren’t equal to 50% of the DMG, because the crits deal up to 200% of the DMG of the normal attacks, so we can reduce the overall DMG negated by 50% again!

This equals a measly 6.25% DMG-reduction.

—> It really is only about the -50% endurance-reg.

But taking into account the logic above, if it would actually affect crits as well, the DMG-reduction would skyrocket from 6.25% to 25%, which is IMHO a bit extreme!

Zelyhn.8069:

There is already a mechanic that reduces damage on all attacks: protection. Chill also fulfills this purpose in a way.
If weakness affected all attacks it would be redundant and would be boring.

That’s a boon you apply to yourself (and at time others) that reduces all damage from all sources.

Weakness is a condition you apply on a target to target basis (and at times against groups of targets) that reduces just the damage they deal.

Chill doesn’t directly affect the damage a skill does, so does not bear mention.

I understand how you might find the skill redundant, but “boring”? Is weakness currently an “exciting” condition?

Weakness is decent. Sort of condition the necro should have alot of access to. But they gave us an underpowered 25% on crit chance with a GRANDMASTER trait (should be at least 33% or even 50%). Coupled with our slow attack speed the weakness doesnt trigged often enough to make the trait useful imo

PowerBottom.5796:

No1 cares about the dmg-reduction effect of Weakness, because it’s basically non-existant, because:

- Most DPS-classes have about 50% crit-chance, so at 50% of attacks, it won’t do anything. (50% chance)
- Then, the 50% of non-crits have a 50% chance to be affected by it (25% chance)
- Then, those 25% deal 50% less DMG (12.5 % DMG-Reduction)

But wait, that wasn’t all, because the 50% of hits that can be affected by weakness aren’t equal to 50% of the DMG, because the crits deal up to 200% of the DMG of the normal attacks, so we can reduce the overall DMG negated by 50% again!

This equals a measly 6.25% DMG-reduction.

—> It really is only about the -50% endurance-reg.

But taking into account the logic above, if it would actually affect crits as well, the DMG-reduction would skyrocket from 6.25% to 25%, which is IMHO a bit extreme!

Which is why I specifically mentioned that there might be some need to split the DR values of crits and non-crits.

Like you pointed out above, the damage reduction portion of weakness is currently a joke for GC spec’d classes – it might as well not even be there for anything other than the endurance regen debuff.

The worst part is it’s more effective against players who try to build balanced builds – there’s been copious bashing of the Burst/bunker dominated meta (less so recently, actually, but still), and weakness just helps reaffirm it – the more survivable/hybrid/tanky you try to be, the more effective weakness is against you.

My point is, if part of the effect is so paltry as to be almost useless, why have it there? Either find a way to make the dmg reduction portion relevant, or remove it entirely.

evilapprentice.6379:

Which is why I specifically mentioned that there might be some need to split the DR values of crits and non-crits.

Like you pointed out above, the damage reduction portion of weakness is currently a joke for GC spec’d classes – it might as well not even be there for anything other than the endurance regen debuff.

The worst part is it’s more effective against players who try to build balanced builds – there’s been copious bashing of the Burst/bunker dominated meta (less so recently, actually, but still), and weakness just helps reaffirm it – the more survivable/hybrid/tanky you try to be, the more effective weakness is against you.

My point is, if part of the effect is so paltry as to be almost useless, why have it there? Either find a way to make the dmg reduction portion relevant, or remove it entirely.

True, in a small manner, it favours glass-cannons over certain balanced-specs, which is just supid.

I kinda like the Idea of Splitting – ANet is looking for a new Condition anyways.

I really think that the current defensive Conditions aren’t as good as they are supposed to:

- Chill: Who cares if all DD’s have tons of Teleports, ranged attacks etc.?
- Weakness: Yeah, as discussed above – it doesn’t do anything in terms of defense.
- Blind: Again very dependent on builds: It can reduce DPS-output of certain builds by a huge amount (Backstab, Arcane-Ele etc.), or it can do almost nothing (spamming classes)

—> I really really would like to see a reactionary Condition that can be applied quickly onto single targets that greatly reduced DPS, but doesn’t have a long duration. Just sth. like Blind in GW1 or a little less drastic, with a longer duration but less DMG-reduction.

Just because ANet doesn’t wan’t dedicated Healers doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be good defensive Conditions….

Just brainstorming, not thinking of all the balance implications it would have, but:

What if it did something like:
Endurance regeneration decreased by 50%; 50% of non-critical hits are glancing blows, and critical chance is reduced by 20% (or insert other value here).

It could essentially become the opposite of Fury with the added non-crit mitigation.

Given that condition cleansing is way more accessible than boon-stripping, it really doesn’t make sense that weakness is less effective than protection.

I wouldn’t mind if it was changed to something like:

Endurance regeneration decreased by 50%; 50% chance to do 25% less damage on ALL attacks (12.5% damage reduction).

For comparison, current version is:
Endurance regeneration decreased by 50%; 50% of Non Critical hits are glancing blows (50% damage); stacks duration. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weakness

This way it wouldn’t punish balanced builds/favour glass cannon builds. The current version is 25% damage reduction against 0% crit chance and 6.25% damage reduction against 50% crit chance.

It should be a flat damage reduction. That’s how it was in gw1.

less RNG = better imo

and this condition is affected by 2 RNGs (crit chance and glancing chance), thats way too much…

+1, I would love to see weakness be more meaningful. Everything is much too offense oriented in this game; defensive conditions are a great idea.

Yes weakness needs to be looked at. I imagine thakittens effect must have been balanced around PvE where crit chance is low/non-existent and was never balanced in PvP where crit chances are very high.

Just look at all the skills/traits that apply weakness in this game. Nearly every single one of these skills is either considered underpowered, used for their other effects, or simply not used at all in PvP. The reduced energy regen is nice, but with the abundance of condi cleanse and high uptime of vigor on many classes it is not enough.

SOLUTION: Get rid of the glancing blow mechanic completely and simply cause weakness to reduce power and condition damage by X amount. This keeps the condition balanced between PvP and PvE and makes the condition useful in nearly any situation. This also has the effect of possibly making underpowered builds more viable as some builds seem to incorporate weakness heavily into their builds (e.g. hammer/mace warriors).

Weakness damage reduction of something less than 10% is a joke. That just means that a glasscanon needs one more autoattack to compensate it or do even more critical hits to ignore it.
I think there are way better options, for example:

a) Weakness reduces Power by X.
b) Weakness reduces critical chance by 20%.
c) Weakness reduces critical damage to 150%.

Maybe b) with 15% because its affect on endurance regeneration.

I don’t think it should affect conditiondamage. Conditiondamage can easy get negated by cleanse all conditions. If you lower the damage more conditiondamage isn’t worth anything. At the moment its not versus Conditiondamage, we don’t want to change the function of the Condition but make it more viable.

The Question is just what kind of direct damage should get reduced. I think Weakness should focus on extreme high critical hits and thats why i think it should be B or C. I like B the most because its simple and the opposite of fury.

Lordrosicky mentioned the grandmaster trait for the necromancer. I think this Trait is fine, but the condition isn’t, not the other way around. (Just saying that this trait seems to be a defense one.. maybe its just in the wrong tree and should trigger on a different situation. If Weakness get changed to something that reduces damage, it could proc on recieved critical hits and placed on the death magic tree and renamed to death shiver. The new curses grandmaster traitslot can be used to introduce a trait that gives might on crit or applys fear on an recieved attack that hits for more than 30% of the necros basehealth(yeah, i like those critpunishment and miss it in the game :P).
But thats not what this post is about.)

Don’t forget that Weakness still can be cleansed and have to be applied first.. means for example backstab thiefs still got their first hit with high damage.

I would like to know if somebody of Anet is reading this and what they think about that..

Weakness needs a buff!

-75% endurance rejen would suffice.

The reason is that, without this, weakness would be insanely awesome, and maybe a bit OP.

Let’s put it this way: weakness is what I’d refer to as an “uncommon” condition, meaning that you can throw it down on players with ease relative to some conditions, but it’s more difficult relative to other conditions. For example, poison and bleed would be “common” conditions, while fear and chill are probably “rare” conditions. The same goes for boons: there are more common ones (might, vigor, fury, swiftness), uncommon ones (possibly aegis, retaliation), and rare ones (protection, possibly aegis, stability). Knowing this, let us continue.

Assuming that crits did not affect whether or not something an attack would be a glancing blow, we can say that, by the definition of the condition, 50% of attacks would do 50% damage, while the other 50% would do 100% damage. Thus, on average, the amount of damage a player would do would be

.5 * .5 + .5 * 1 = .75, or 75% of their regular damage on average.

In other words, weakness, an uncommon condition, would have almost the same effects as a rare boon, protection, and would also reduce endurance regeneration by 50% on top of that. That’s pretty kittening strong.

However, because of the negation of glancing blows based on crits, the formula for the total average amount of damage done would be

CC * CD + (1-CC)/2 * .5 + (1-CC)/2 * 1, where CC is Critical Chance and CD is critical damage. This equates to CC * CD + 3(1-CC)/4, which is a significant reduction in damage lost to glancing blows. Still, however, there is the issue of -50% endurance regen.

So that’s why it’s like that.

MaXi.3642:

less RNG = better imo

and this condition is affected by 2 RNGs (crit chance and glancing chance), thats way too much…

Less rng does not mean that something is better. If the chance of not getting a glancing blow was .0001%, and a person’s crit chance was .0001%, would you still say that the condition is bad because it’s affected by 2 rngs? Hopefully not.

Weakness is actually a seriously underestimated condition that really is only bad if the opponent has a high crit chance. However, realize that bleed and burn aren’t very good if the enemy has high vits, for example; also realize that, if nothing else, this does provide a very good source of reducing endurance regen.

Yeah it is pretty underwhelming. I think the best option would be to make it reduce crit chance by 20% in addition to making non-crits glancing blows. This way it would be a decent counter to fury stacking.

Vulnerability is also pretty weak, but it scales incredibly well and becomes overpowered in pve zergs versus bosses. And blind is very limited, being nearly useless against any profession that relies on multiple hits. In general, boons are better than conditions in GW2.

I also believe devs don’t want the boon/ condition effects to mirror each other too much. Protect stacks in duration while vulnerability in intensity; vice-versa might and weakness. This make each counter effect more distinct from each other.

My suggestions:
- Blind being able to stack (for multi-hit attacks) but lasting less time (3-4s);
- Vulnerability adding a flat armor decrease (10-15%), but having it affect endurance per stack (taking that function away from weakness). That flat decrease is important to be any good when playing solo, and not being too strong (up to 25%) when playing in zergs;
- Weakness having a simpler, more universal damage decrease.

Arganthium.5638:

Weakness is actually a seriously underestimated condition that really is only bad if the opponent has a high crit chance. However, realize that bleed and burn aren’t very good if the enemy has high vits, for example; also realize that, if nothing else, this does provide a very good source of reducing endurance regen.

That’s part of my point – Weakness is currently a mixed condition – 50% less endurance regen is pretty universal, which makes the condition worth using in the first place. The other part is intended to reduce damage.

Who does the scariest damage? Glass cannons. Which player is least effected by the damage reducing portion of Weakness? … Glass cannons. There’s a bit of logical inconsistency to that.

There should be a condition which reduces the damage burst classes do – I’m not saying it has to be Weakness, or suggesting what % the damage should be reduced (That’s a play testing issue). Weakness should either effect both non-crits and crits (probably at different %’s for balance reasons), or they should introduce a new condition that reduces damage, and just make weakness an endurance regen debuff.

^ condition classes are also pretty untouched by weakness.

Weakness is most effective against bunker classes, which just seems backwards to me. It should effect DPS builds more, in my opinion.

PowerBottom.5796:

But taking into account the logic above, if it would actually affect crits as well, the DMG-reduction would skyrocket from 6.25% to 25%, which is IMHO a bit extreme!

And 6.25% is useless.
So quite obviously number adjustments to somewhere in the middle?
Weakness is unreliable to get up for the duration needed to really hurt dodging, with the mass cleansing in this game.

It is just a bad condition pretty much only used by coincidence or as cover for good conditions in this game.

That is a pretty bad spot…
I’d like to see it be a good ‘anti-spike’ hate but that’d involve a tweak to most weakness applications… and on Anets time scale that’d take months to work out properly.

So it affecting all dmg (bump down the dmg mitigation) or just crits, would be fine.

Change Weakness to:
0% Crit rate or 50% reduction in crit rate

Introduce Fatigue:
75% reduction in endurance recharge

It is a bigger change than most here considered, but here is why I think it would be a better way. Frankly Protection needs a pretty big nerf bat too, but that is a whole other discussion and I don’t want to derail here.

1) Weakness would better mitigate burst than the current form of Weakness without excessively penalizing DPS builds that are power focused rather than crit., and would somewhat mitigate the effectiveness of condition builds that are reliant on crit procs. without penalizing them excessively relative to others. Weakness tends to get buried under more common conditions and isn’t as easily cleansed, so it would most likely cause a shift toward more balanced builds rather than the all-or-nothings that rule the roost at present.

2) The Fatigue effect would be a much more efficient counter to perma-vigor builds making it a strong but not OP bunker busting condition. Would combo well with vulnerability promoting more skilled play and smart stacking of condis.

3) Due to the ratio of cleanses/conditions and the ratio of strips/boons there needs to be an increase in the number of conditions (though not necessarily DoTs) and strips in the game to make debuffing via conditions a viable strategy compared to boon stacking. This would be a step in that direction.

I’m in the camp for a severe reduction in crit percentage if not making it effectively zero. Even if that means putting in extra work to adjust duration times.

I’m not knowledgeable enough to know but this type of change may strongly encourage a wider variety of builds.

djtool.8372:

I’m in the camp for a severe reduction in crit percentage* if not making it effectively zero*. Even if that means putting in extra work to adjust duration times.

I’m not knowledgeable enough to know but this type of change may strongly encourage a wider variety of builds.

Removing builds from the game sure does improve variety.
If Weakness removed crits which generally burst builds are dependent on, then what happens is a greater pull to go towards conditions than current or crit builds trying to fit in more condi removal dropping their damage and generally being more ineffective as a result of how ezpz conditions are applied anyways (so might as well scratch the crit build).

It definitely be interesting if weakness gave better damage reduction and that would make some skills much more interesting if it wasn’t an rng based reduction, but shutting down crits? Are you cereal?

ensoriki.5789:

Removing builds from the game sure does improve variety.
If Weakness removed crits which generally burst builds are dependent on, then what happens is a greater pull to go towards conditions than current or crit builds trying to fit in more condi removal dropping their damage and generally being more ineffective as a result of how ezpz conditions are applied anyways (so might as well scratch the crit build).

It definitely be interesting if weakness gave better damage reduction and that would make some skills much more interesting if it wasn’t an rng based reduction, but shutting down crits? Are you cereal?

If weakness only ever lasted 1-3 seconds, that would actually be a fine mechanic, a strategic anti-burst hate.
Something that actually lets you have some innate teamwork with others is soarly needed.

hello jonathan,
please reduce condition stacking, and make individual conditions more effective.
ty best regards,
milo

So far, I like the idea of a short-duration anti-burst condition the best.

Weakness should affect critical attacks, because it’s the type of condition that you most want to use versus burst professions. And you kinda can’t do it. Having all attacks have a 50% chance for a glancing blow, or maybe, if that’s too random, a general damage reduction that affects criticals more than normal hits, instead of the opposite. Kinda like an anti-fury in addition to its anti-might effect.

garethh.3518:

ensoriki.5789:

Removing builds from the game sure does improve variety.
If Weakness removed crits which generally burst builds are dependent on, then what happens is a greater pull to go towards conditions than current or crit builds trying to fit in more condi removal dropping their damage and generally being more ineffective as a result of how ezpz conditions are applied anyways (so might as well scratch the crit build).

It definitely be interesting if weakness gave better damage reduction and that would make some skills much more interesting if it wasn’t an rng based reduction, but shutting down crits? Are you cereal?

If weakness only ever lasted 1-3 seconds, that would actually be a fine mechanic, a strategic anti-burst hate.
Something that actually lets you have some innate teamwork with others is soarly needed.

I rather it’s damage reduction wasn’t based on Rng. Something like a 15% damage reduction that worked on all direct damage in addition to its current endurance effect.
Given the professions that actually apply weakness I’d think that an interesting change.
@ John.
Pistol thieves

weakness:
target can’t crit.
lasts up to 3 seconds.
less condi spam bs pls thnx

The Weakness condition could be removed for the game and I don’t think it would really make a difference…

What if it halved all critical damage bonus?

I would rather weakness be the flip of what it does currently; reduce the damage that critical hits do, rather than reducing the damage of non criticals. That change would mean it really hurts heavy burst builds, and promotes more balanced builds that have high base damage over large amounts of critical damage.

Necromancers need better access to weakness.

Necro does not need anymore weakness, as is we are the only profession readily able to apply it. What it needs is a more meaningful effect like this thread suggests, as well as easier application for other classes.

Having it only affect critical attacks would make weakness a very niche condition. Especially in pve.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Having it only affect critical attacks would make weakness a very niche condition. Especially in pve.

In addition it’s keeping this condition in the land of Rng.
a 15% reduction or something along those lines in damage would be very potent in terms of damage mitigation for Staff ele, necro and mace/hammer warriors. Giving the warrior an indirect way of going around their lack of protection.

ensoriki.5789:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Having it only affect critical attacks would make weakness a very niche condition. Especially in pve.

In addition it’s keeping this condition in the land of Rng.
a 15% reduction or something along those lines in damage would be very potent in terms of damage mitigation for Staff ele, necro and mace/hammer warriors. Giving the warrior an indirect way of going around their lack of protection.

Flat reduction makes it too strong when paired with protection though, meaning either protection needs to be reduced or it has to be random.

Numot.3965:

ensoriki.5789:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Having it only affect critical attacks would make weakness a very niche condition. Especially in pve.

In addition it’s keeping this condition in the land of Rng.
a 15% reduction or something along those lines in damage would be very potent in terms of damage mitigation for Staff ele, necro and mace/hammer warriors. Giving the warrior an indirect way of going around their lack of protection.

Flat reduction makes it too strong when paired with protection though, meaning either protection needs to be reduced or it has to be random.

The thing to note is who applies weakness and how.
It being paired with protection will not be common in the slightest unless you have a Signet build Staff ele. Which to be frank.
I’m not losing my mind over.

So generally for it to be used with protection will require some sort of team effort.
Except I think for one signet Guardians have, but I can’t recall if it is even run.

Edit: Signet of judgement* but that already decreases damage by 10%, trading that off for a 15% reduction of 5s? Is interesting but not huge and the duration can be reduced.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Having it only affect critical attacks would make weakness a very niche condition. Especially in pve.

This is a PvP forum.
(there is a divide when it comes to balance)
And anti crit dmg isn’t very niche.

Completely agreed. I’ve always thought it was really stupid how the damage reduction part of Weakness affected glass cannons the /least/.

Weakness affects the endurance, a hard counter to vigor. A condition to solely counter those who invest so heavily in damage would be fair? They already have less defense for investing so high in crit.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Some great ideas in here. We’re also thinking about Weakness ourselves and wondering if we need to do any changes to make it more meaningful.

Thanks for being so constructive with your feedback!

J

Since you guys never seem to consider the ramifications of changes on the PvE side of things, I would just like to point out that any buff to Weakness is also a buff to Karkas.
Probably others too but that is what comes most immediate due to the current event.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Weakness affects the endurance, a hard counter to vigor. A condition to solely counter those who invest so heavily in damage would be fair? They already have less defense for investing so high in crit.

True. That and I do believe the game mode desires players having the ability to quickly switch the ownership of nodes (or games get called 40s before they actually finish) too much anti-burst would drastically slow down the pace of the game imo. Though a consistent minor damage decrease should be fine and current weakness isn’t consistent.

I want to add that a MH Dagger elementalist can apply weakness with their air #2, although it’s not used very often (due to weakness not being the best thing ever, and the skill’s mechanics missing in crucial situations). So a d/d aura elementalist can easily have a combination of weakness and protection with only 10 points investment in earth, in addition to their godlike elemental attunement trait, and possibly coupled with their healing glyph (if they bring it).

That being said, aura elementalists aren’t exactly top tier compared to bunker elementalists, but even so, a bunker can easily get a combination of both.

I do like the idea of weakness basically being the “warrior’s version of protection”. It’s very… warrior-ish. And any buff to weakness would positively affect several underused weapons, including ranger’s mh axe.

About karkas, I don’t think it would be any big problem. If weakness affected critical hits, it would probably just punish zerker classes trying to “speed clear” them. :P

What about this “Weakness” a condition that counter boon “Protection” instead of double the effect.

Weakness: You can NOT critical but you will ALWAYS critical on a target that has “Protection”

Random idea..

asides from its current effects. make it lower the enemie’s stats by % based on condition damage. then weakness would mean something to more than just the straight DPS builds, it could also affect condi/bunkers etc

consider nerfing protection as well. 25 percent to match vulnerability

make the endurance suppression stronger or make endurance regeneration halt while the condi is up, problem fixed