Guild Wars 2

i agree , condi spam its not only becouse necro or engi are stacking condis , every class have easy acces to bleeds , burnig etc even if they run power builds , second thing is that during teamfight there is lot of might stacking to basicly power build can run with decent amount of condi dmg also.

There are far too many conditions in the game.
5 damaging conditions. (1 does more damage for moving, 1 punishes for using skills, 1 reduces healing).
3 movement impeding. (1 significantly increases skill recharge time).
2 damage reducing. (1 is a huge reduction to any pure Power build – bunker or burst, but does nothing to condi builds).
1 control (that can also become a huge damaging condition).
1 damage increasing.

I like this idea from another thread to try and deal with the condition spam that can be achieved by condi builds but also by Power builds from condi spam professions like Necro and Engineer. One of the main issues is just being able to apply so many different conditions so often as these two classes, it takes no skill at all as most of it comes from auto-attack or AoE.

Mightymealworm.8409:

I think that access to damaging conditions should be limited to 2 per class mechanic, a primary condition and a secondary. Third and fourth conditions could be applied via sigils and/or runes for ‘cover’ conditions. Example:

Elementalist: Primary-Burning (from fire attunement), Secondary-Bleed (from earth attunement) The other attunements offer non-damage conditions. This provides a healthy amount of variety without the ‘spam’.

Guardian: Primary-Burning, Secondary-Retaliation* (Well, its not really a condition, but I think the retaliation boon tries to fit in here for the guard.)

How I would like to see the other classes: Change skills so each class has native access to only 2 DAMAGE conditions. (does not include utility, control)

Necromancer: Primary-Torment, Secondary-Poison

Ranger: Primary-Poison, Secondary-Burning

Warrior: Primary-Bleed, Secondary-Burning

Thief: Primary-Poison, Secondary-Bleed

Mesmer: Primary-Confusion, Secondary-Torment

Engineer: Primary-Burning, Secondary-Confusion

Or something like this. I think it would still allow for a lot of Condition Damage potential, especially if the right 2 or 3 classes got together. It does, however, prevent a class from relying on their own conditions alone to take down enemies.

The condition mechanic is out of control, it’s spammy and easy ranged damage that takes no skill and has no consequences for poor play.
Watching most Spirit Rangers, Scepter Necros or Grenade/Bomb Engi’s play and you will see random dodge rolls that don’t evade anything, using skills as soon as they are off cooldown, everything is on recharge and they just keep spamming ranged auto-attacks. But there’s no punishment for this poor play. If you played a Power build without conditions like this you would be useless.

Conditions in GW2 need a radical overhaul but I don’t think this dev team has the stones to admit their mistakes and do it. I don’t see the fundamental flaws being turned around and so the game will never become popular again, I think most people that are still playing are just filling a gap until something else comes out.

i agree with op

quite few condi spells are not even telegraphed or rather pita to deal with

i myself have a necro, equip staff, spam marks/wells on point GG

Solid breakdown. Though this in an inherent problem with the mechanics of the game and the way many of the traits have been implemented. In order to fully fix the problem, the entirety of the following would have to be reworked:

• Passive application of conditions
• Passive removal of conditions
• Type of conditions available to each class
• Amount of condition application available to each class

ANet is going the wrong way by giving the wrong classes more access to condition removal, rather than notching down conditions in every other class.

hm, guildwars 2 isnt a deck building strategizing team coordination game.

its a twitchy semi tactic rotation game.

only theres no aiming, and targeting sucks, and its only innovation was the idea that weapons determine your first 5 skills… which wasnt exactly clever.

If one was to apply strict logic (without going into whether these issues are real) an easy to implement solution to both the issues that Nova Stiker and Ezrael have presented in this thread could be to limit the number of different types of conditions that may be present on a target at any given time.

Such a change would not only, obviously, limit the total number of conditions in game, but it would also allow for conditions to actually “miss” (they’d trigger but be blocked, as the target already has X amount of conditions on them, with X being whatever amount allowed of concurrently acting condition types). Players using condition builds would have to be aware of how many conditions their target is carryin in order not to waste key applications.

A side effect would be that classes and builds who have a large amount of condition types at their disposal would no longer be vastly superior to classes who inherently only have access to very few different conditions to deal their damage.

Cleansing abilities would have to be adjusted accordingly, however.

I am not suggesting this course of action per se, I am pretty much just trying to offer a solution for the perceived issues voiced by the two posters. Should the designers concur with their views on the issue though, the above might become a valid possibility in my opinion.

The issue with conditions; no healers.

How to fix it? Make better healer speccs… Oh wait, those don’t do damage so no one plays them….nvm.

OP is being disingenuous. What he described is that fast weapon auto-attacks with conditions don’t punish failure as harshly.

He then goes to describe Pin Down, which often needs to hit to convert into an Arching Arrow/Combustive Shot hit. And because that’s an obvious setup you often save condition removal for it. Not to mention it’s compared to Hundred Blades, which is better compared to Arching Arrow/Combustive Shot while Pin Down is better compared to any other snare or stun skill.

There’s Crossfire, which is an auto-attack skill, and more analogous to his anecdote. But to say there’s never a bad time to use it would be ignoring reflect abilities.

Then he compares another auto-attack, from his anecdote, and compares it to a skill rarely used for other reasons (primarily because the auto-attack is a better power equivalent for an auto-attack that does all the work).

So, to answer the OP’s intention, there need to be higher cooldowns on higher damaging condition abilities. Although the reason why they tend to not have as high a cooldown as skills like Fire Grab is specifically because blowing a high cooldown on a skill which can have its damage negated from a lower cooldown condition clear would be an inherent weakness.

And at the end of the day, if more Power builds are using Condition abilities without at least using a high Might stack build, I’d like to see how far they get. If the Power Necro meta actually moves towards using Dhuumfire instead of Close to Death, I’ll eat crow.

I disagree. The mechanic of condition application isn’t really an issue. In fact, it’s basically the same in every MMO.

Conditions in GW2 suffer from 2 fundamental problems:

1. everything is a condition
2. conditions are easily accessible for all builds

In GW2 is that movement impairing abilities, DoTs, healing reduction and some lockdown/counterattack abilities all fall under the singular blanket of ‘Condition’.
These conditions are all different and have varying impact upon a particular profession/spec. However, many condition removal abilities do not differentiate between conditions.

Secondly, there are many, many abilities and traits in the game which have a secondary mechanic of applying a condition a side-effect. These conditions are usually somewhat short-lived. However, the cumulative effect can be substantial.

a t s e.9614:

3 things are wrong with conditions:
1) spammy autoattacks
2) dire\rabid ( or whatever ) set OP, tank stats with condi dmg GG
3) not enough condi cleanse in the game

Yea let’s increase the amount of condi cleanse so that we can get back to complaining about how much cleansing there is in the game!

Nova Stiker.8396:

The point is:

• No matter how the enemy responds, evades, blocks or go invisible. You are doing damage that pure based builds would miss. If you don’t miss, you simply do more damage.

I want to address this because it’s a common misconception on the forums. Condition skills must land to do damage, just like power skills. Evades, blocks, and stealths function exactly the same in mitigating both types of damage.

i.e. if you block eviscerate, it does no damage. If you block shrapnel grenade, it does no damage. The only reason it looks like condition skills are different is that you take the damage after the skill lands, so it feels like you can’t dodge the damage.

tl;dr you can dodge conditions, just not after they hit you, which is the same as power attacks.

ofc u can dodge , block etc condis.

From necro point of view autoattack on scepter is fine and it should work like it is , the problem is that burning can prock on it , remeber that necro is a stationary condi class that can deal dmg only from range , at the same time he is very easy to kill when fouced so dont adress bunker/condi build to necro becouse necro is not bunkerish/sustain class.

One of the solution would be burning change on every class , scaling is bad , very bad , it should work diffrent , if u run power build and your condi dmg is 0 burn should hit for very small amount . Burning atm is the bigest problem , when u die 90% most dmg taken is from burning.

As a necro witch is not good balance situation i must say that i realy dont like how necro works , but its not our (necro comiunity) foult that necro got those buffs , necro without buring would be pretty fine , torment is ok becouse u need to channel it and its 600 radius. Insted of that devs gonna nerf amount of bleeds that necro can stack whats in my opinion is bad idea , remeber that wars and rangers can stack bleeds 10 times faster that necro using less skill.

Second solution that might work with burning and i realy like it it :
lower the burning dmg by 50% but when u put burning on someone the dmg is higher every tick

Reduce the base damage of condition… make condition “crit” similar to direct hits. If you want to deal good condition damage you’ve to invest in condition damage, precision & crit damage, else if you go for the regular “lol i only need to invest in condition dmg for deeps, rest i spend in tanky stats” you shouldn’t deal to much damage. Something like that. Also make weakness impact on the condition damage as well. After those changes which are only fair, then it’ll be fine.

biggest problem with condis is they can be bursty

condis should be damage over time and not do the big damage when applicate

so
- skills should do powerdamage OR condidamage – never both
- perfect it would be when first ticks would be low to later high damage at end so it reward me when i remove it not with the first tick and it reward the necro when he apply the condis and stop with cool fearplay or the engi with knockbacks the target to remove it

sure cleaning spells for this should have animations so can be interrupted – but this should have everything ingame

but this change would make condis not so brainless

Condi meta real issue, will take some time to fix this if it’s ever going to get fixed… I hope it becomes one of the FOCUSSED discussion topics

This thread annoys me.

First of all, how many power necros do you see running scepter? No one good, that’s for sure.

Second, condition damage is easier to avoid than power damage. Why? Because even if you get hit with a condition nuke you can cleanse it. If you get hit with an eviscerate or backstab, you aren’t getting that health back.

I think the main stat should be power. with condition damage and critical damage being opposites that one choose to specialize in.

So if you crit, you can either do upfront damage or apply a condition, but the condition will be determine by the skill. But then reduce how frequently one can crit.

pedrst.3127:

Reduce the base damage of condition… make condition “crit” similar to direct hits. If you want to deal good condition damage you’ve to invest in condition damage, precision & crit damage, else if you go for the regular “lol i only need to invest in condition dmg for deeps, rest i spend in tanky stats” you shouldn’t deal to much damage. Something like that. Also make weakness impact on the condition damage as well. After those changes which are only fair, then it’ll be fine.

I see this suggestion a lot and the issue I have with it is that currently, the most popular condition builds use rabid amulet (condition damage, precision, toughness). So making conditions able to “crit” wouldn’t change the popular builds at all, but would absolutely demolish every niche build that uses settler’s or carrion.

Nova Stiker.8396:

TL;DR

• Conditions needs to have timing in their mechanics.
• Check out my suggestion thread of my thoughts on improving conditions and boons.

The problem you’re describing is very real at times. There is often a lack of timing. However, you are being very biased as there are tons of really bad times to use powerful conditions. Using Pin Down right as the Engineer drops the Healing Turret makes me want to curl up in a ball and die, for example.

The timing mechanic is supposed to be condition removal. In design, you have to time your conditions right after the condition removal is gone. The key is to understand the target’s condition removal system, whether it’s 2 condition removal every 15-20s with the Engineer’s Healing Turret, or the 3 condition removal every 10s from the Ranger’s Empathic Bond ticks.

Unfortunately, this mechanic is often very out of balance. Here’s my take on it, and my suggestions to bring it back.

• Condition removal is not strategic enough for some professions. Often, it happens fairly regularly, but is nearly useless at countering condition bursts. Example: What is an Elixir based Engineer going to do when getting Fear spiked? Cast .5 second abilities that remove 1 condition at a time and get interrupted by more Fear? There are, of course, lots of great condition wipes available, but they’re extremely costly to damage/support. Engineers can’t run Elixir C in good conscience, Guardians usually can’t run Contemplation of Purity either. This is because conditions are so re-applicable and not on long enough cooldowns for players to feel punished for getting all their conditions removed. Wiping your conditions that the enemy worked to apply hardly punishes him, so why not just run something offensive and destroy him first? One is much better off just using Lyssa runes and the profession’s natural evasion and this enables the user to have no problem forgetting condition removal all-together while running a full damage build. That’s why we see the prevalence of this rune on Thieves, Warriors, DPS Guards, and Mesmers.

My suggestion regarding condition removal: Across all 8 professions I feel the number of conditions removed by each condition removal should be higher. I feel that condition removals should also be more infrequent. The chess-style countering of conditions are good for the game – high risk, high reward. For this to actually be effective though, the cooldowns of the condition applying abilities would have to be slightly higher, too.

• Conditions have generally no ‘big’ telegraphs. Necromancer is most guilty of this, as pretty much every ability they have besides the new Signet of Spite is nearly animation-less and has no projectile visual. Ranger is guilty of this too. So much of the profession’s damage is folded into the passive auto-attack – there’s just no way to actively react to 120 projectiles a minute.

My suggestion regarding telegraphing: Condition applying abilities get some updated animations, and become more visual. Playing the advocate here, what if Necromancer Marks flew through the air to land where they were placed? (Not my idea). What if Necromancer Scepter attacks had a bloody trail back to the Necromancer? What if the Spirit Ranger’s Shortbow had most of the conditions folded in to the 2 & 4 skills, and they were given better animations & skill shot mechanics? Currently, it’s just very unclear when to use your active defenses against condition applying abilities because some of them are too generic and and have extremely short cooldowns.

TLDR, I think if the Skills and Balance team made:

1) Condition abilities telegraphed well.
2) Damaging conditions more present on higher cooldown abilities than spammy ones.
3) Condition removal more infrequent.
4) Condition removal removed more conditions.

Then we’d see a lot better plays, Rangers and Necros could actually shine through player skill, and finally, the ever coveted impeccable timing that would be required for Condition users to demolish players.

Thedenofsin.7340:

I disagree. The mechanic of condition application isn’t really an issue. In fact, it’s basically the same in every MMO.

Conditions in GW2 suffer from 2 fundamental problems:

1. everything is a condition
2. conditions are easily accessible for all builds

In GW2 is that movement impairing abilities, DoTs, healing reduction and some lockdown/counterattack abilities all fall under the singular blanket of ‘Condition’.
These conditions are all different and have varying impact upon a particular profession/spec. However, many condition removal abilities do not differentiate between conditions.

Secondly, there are many, many abilities and traits in the game which have a secondary mechanic of applying a condition a side-effect. These conditions are usually somewhat short-lived. However, the cumulative effect can be substantial.

Exactly this.

A damage condition, like bleeding or burning, has no mechanical issues. It’s like a regular power attack, with the damage done over time instead of directly.
It goes through protection and weakness, also through armor (usually but no necessarily and advantage). On the other hand, it can be cleansed and “can’t burst”.

Same goes for chill, cripple, immobilize, weakness … they are distinct debuffs applied by concrete skills, with no problem at all on their own.

The real issue is about everything being labeled as condition.
If a condition user covers some specific condition he wants to stay, that’s perfect. Sometimes (specially in teamfights), however, you find your conditon bar being filled and constantly refilled by different sources, many of the them being minor effects and/or not necessarily intended.
Lets take a look at Precise Strikes (Warrior Arms 5). It seems a keystone trait for sword condition builds, but it’s also present in any build using, for example, Unsuspected Foe, and it’s more than a slight damage boost. It can be an annoying bleed covering some other effect, like a cripple or immob, you could want to cleanse, and this happens without the attacker actually trying to do so.

The game probably needs:
a) Less condition on hit/crit traits and less side condition effects in some skills.
Fair examples could be Warrior GS autoattack or Guardian passive VoJ. Those are not the kind effects that you would want to cleanse. However, they exist and can make cleansing unnecessarily messy and random.
This happens a lot with vulnerability, which is an OK effect IMHO for a skill that delivers high stacks on a moderate/long CD, but unhealthy for condition management in most situations.
b) More cleanses like thief heals or Warrior warhorn, which cleanse a concrete kind of conditions you could situationally want to get rid of.

Something similar happens with boons. There are too many minor boost (like a single might stack) sources, sometimes even AoE, which make boon stripping completely chaotic on teamfights (where there’s also a good amount of spam).

Single condition removal / boon strips just can’t work properly in this scenario. They’re useful, because you will always cleanse or strip something (for cleanses, it will usually remove any high bleed stack, which is awesome), but they lose a lot of tactical use that would be much better for the game.

A second problem with conditions are amulets.
While direct damage is boosted by power, precision and critical damage, condtions only use condition damage (and condition duration, but this is absent from amulets) and precision to a minor extent in order to proc some traits/runes.
This allow condtion builds to run Rabid and get a high amount of toughness, or even worse, to use Settler and become really tanky while still dealing moderate counter pressure.
Some defense is not bad at all since condition users are somehow attrition builds, but they should probably get vitality instead of thoughness.

Arachnid.4062:

This thread annoys me.

First of all, how many power necros do you see running scepter? No one good, that’s for sure.

Second, condition damage is easier to avoid than power damage. Why? Because even if you get hit with a condition nuke you can cleanse it. If you get hit with an eviscerate or backstab, you aren’t getting that health back.

Firstly – Any decent Power Necro still takes Scepter, for the reasons described in this thread.
The easy access to 3 damage conditions makes for horrific overall damage.
30 in Spite + runes with 10% condition duration as any decent Necro would take yields:

From ONE Scepter auto-attack chain- 4 stacks of Bleeding for 8 seconds. 6 seconds of Burning and 5 seconds of Poison. That’s 1992 + 2556 + 615.
5163 in condition damage from one Scepter auto-attack using a Berserker Amulet….
700 + 700 + 1000 (all crits) from the normal damage too.
So with a Berserker Amulet a single Scepter auto-attack chain = 5100 in condi damage and 2400 in pure damage. Wait what?….

That’s why Necros take Scepter, whether Power or Condi built.
The target has damage coming from 3 different conditions making it harder to cleanse and their healing is reduced by 33%.
Plus if you take Chill of Death you automatically cast 7s of Chilled, rip 3 boons off and do damage when the target hits 25% hp (soon to be buffed to trigger at 50% hp).

Your second point – Even if I get hit with a condi I have a chance to cleanse it? Let’s see.

Eviscerate has a clear animation, you have time to react to it with a dodge roll, blind or block to avoid the damage, you then know its on cooldown for 8 seconds and you have avoided 5k damage.

How do I dodge Dhuumfire? It’s going to do 2500-4000 (Berserker/Rabid) damage to me every 10 seconds, but I don’t know which attack will trigger it. So I can’t dodge it.
It could be triggered by any of the instant hit auto-attack chains or a skill.

Now it’s on me, but it’s not just Dhuumfire, I have Poison and Bleed from the Scepter auto-attack. So I need a condi cleanse that removes at least 3 conditions in order to cleanse that burning. Cleanses that remove 3 or more conditions are on 30s + cooldowns. Dhuumfire procs every 10s.

That would be a best case scenario, in reality against a Necro I will also be suffering from Chilled / Cripple for much of the fight, Weakness, possibly Immobilize and without a doubt at some point there will be 2-4 seconds of Fear doing 1000 dps.

Suffice it to say – There are too many conditions, they are applied too often and there are too many easy auto proc mechanics from traits that add huge damage like burning.

Ezrael.6859:

Firstly – Any decent Power Necro still takes Scepter, for the reasons described in this thread.
The easy access to 3 damage conditions makes for horrific overall damage.
30 in Spite + runes with 10% condition duration as any decent Necro would take yields:

From ONE Scepter auto-attack chain- 4 stacks of Bleeding for 8 seconds. 6 seconds of Burning and 5 seconds of Poison. That’s 1992 + 2556 + 615.

Nope. Only 3 seconds of burning. Dhuumfire is 2 seconds of burning in spvp.

Ezrael.6859:

From ONE Scepter auto-attack chain- 4 stacks of Bleeding for 8 seconds. 6 seconds of Burning and 5 seconds of Poison. That’s 1992 + 2556 + 615.

Actually, scepter 1 applies a single 4-second bleed. Dhuumfire is a 2-second burn. I understand your frustration, but please try to research a bit before calling for nerfs.

Every time i play WvW:
I see my guilds elected chief power thief 3 shot people
I will throw down every necro condition skill I have accessible only to see it power cleansed by shouts
Get spiked by 15 earthshaker warriors

Now I know this isn’t the WvW forums and people will probably call me out on that, but if you change the way conditions work in PvP too much it will only create a larger gap in between the two. There are people that wouldn’t mind I’m sure, but that sounds like bad business to me.
The two things I would change with conditions is to have a maximum duration allowed per condition. I’m tired of getting 30+ seconds of burning and poison, not to mention the kittening immobilize stacking now. The second is to have cleansing skills that COMPLETELY remove a condition to be reworked so that they remove a couple stacks or durations per tic, depending on the condition. I think this would drastically level the playing field for all specs, because what some people stated for solutions makes me think that the rabid/carrion players would be completely useless.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Ezrael.6859:

From ONE Scepter auto-attack chain- 4 stacks of Bleeding for 8 seconds. 6 seconds of Burning and 5 seconds of Poison. That’s 1992 + 2556 + 615.

Actually, scepter 1 applies a single 4-second bleed. Dhuumfire is a 2-second burn. I understand your frustration, but please try to research a bit before calling for nerfs.

Dhuumfire scale to 6 seconds in spvp although I doubt it needs to be nerfed with the state the warrior is in. I made a build being described and it does good damage. Little squishy even with ds, and I’m sure someone could make a better build.
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;04dZ;1kHVF0343J-K0;9;4TJ;0J39A48;529-ENW8;28ZF18ZF15VR

I tend to agree with the OP in that conditions need to be timed and not spammed, but I dunno maybe spam is just a part of the method to this madness.

Amstel Steel.2058:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Ezrael.6859:

From ONE Scepter auto-attack chain- 4 stacks of Bleeding for 8 seconds. 6 seconds of Burning and 5 seconds of Poison. That’s 1992 + 2556 + 615.

Actually, scepter 1 applies a single 4-second bleed. Dhuumfire is a 2-second burn. I understand your frustration, but please try to research a bit before calling for nerfs.

Dhuumfire can scale to 6 seconds in spvp although I doubt it needs to be nerfed with the state the warrior is in. I made a build being described and it does good damage. Little squishy even with ds, and I’m sure someone could make a better build.
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;04dZ;1kHVF0343J-K0;9;4TJ;0J39A48;529-ENW8;28ZF18ZF15VR

I tend to agree with the OP in that conditions need to be timed and not spammed, but I dunno maybe spam is just a part of the method to this madness.

Not sure how you’re getting +200% condition duration to make a 2s Dhuumfire proc into a 6s one, to be quite honest with ya.

Chaith.8256:

Amstel Steel.2058:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Ezrael.6859:

From ONE Scepter auto-attack chain- 4 stacks of Bleeding for 8 seconds. 6 seconds of Burning and 5 seconds of Poison. That’s 1992 + 2556 + 615.

Actually, scepter 1 applies a single 4-second bleed. Dhuumfire is a 2-second burn. I understand your frustration, but please try to research a bit before calling for nerfs.

Dhuumfire can scale to 6 seconds in spvp although I doubt it needs to be nerfed with the state the warrior is in. I made a build being described and it does good damage. Little squishy even with ds, and I’m sure someone could make a better build.
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;04dZ;1kHVF0343J-K0;9;4TJ;0J39A48;529-ENW8;28ZF18ZF15VR

I tend to agree with the OP in that conditions need to be timed and not spammed, but I dunno maybe spam is just a part of the method to this madness.

Not sure how you’re getting +200% condition duration to make a 2s Dhuumfire proc into a 6s one, to be quite honest with ya.

It can scale to a little over 5 seconds on the training npcs in spvp but in matches it does a little over 3 seconds.

Amstel Steel.2058:

It can scale to a little over 5 seconds on the training npcs in spvp but in matches it does a little over 3 seconds.

There’s a bug that makes the heart of the mists act as a PvE zone. Basically, you can use +40% duration food and dhuumfire is a base 3 seconds there. In PvP, it is mathematically impossible to get dhuumfire over 3 seconds, and just getting it up to 3 seconds takes quite a bit of gear.

Right, so you’ve arbitrarily decided that it’s always good to spam your condition cooldowns but not your DD cooldowns.

There are plenty of times, just with direct damage, that using a condition cooldown will be sub-optimal. They are generally the exact same times you wouldn’t use your DD skill.

The current issue with conditions is players expect to NEVER lose against a condition class. They expect burst DPS to be the one and only spec for PvP, just as it is for PvE.

• They refuse to slot cleanse
• They refuse to accept that blocks/dodges/blinds affect conditions just the same as DD
• They refuse to accept that DoT damage is slower than DD burst thus NEEDS higher defensive stats to allow time to wear an opponent down.

Please for yourselves and the sake of these forums: Go build and play a condition specced character.
If you are suddenly an unstoppable PvP god, congratulations.
What you will undoubtedly find however, is that you are not suddenly invincible, that cleanse is extremely powerful and that you have to play well, just as with your previous DD character, to achieve success.

Good luck out there.

One thing people keep mentioning is more cleanse.

I GREATLY disagree. Guild Wars 2 needs LESS cleanse.
But at it’s current state, it is going to turn that way.

If classes didn’t have a monstrous amount of various spammable conditions, then there will be no need for so much cleanse.

Also toning down the condition duration, both traits and foods, in WvW you can be running around with over 100% condition duration. Make the foods less powerful.

• I got hit by Throw Torch by a ranger with pure condition damage, no duration increase, with foods it lasted 10 seconds and did 8k damage!
• He showed me Splitblade, then swapped weapons for Sigil then hit with Crippling Talon. 11 stacks of bleeding did 14k damage!!

I actually beat him with my Elementalist 1v1 because of cleanse.

That isn’t right, both the fact he did so much condition damage and the fact I was able to cleanse so much of it so easily.

If you reduce the need to spam conditions, you reduce the need to cleanse.

More cleansing is NOT the answer.

Guild Wars 2’s condis are Guild Wars 1’s hexs.

Just fire on CD, opponent screen filled with pink icons, never enough cleanses.
Same exact mistake all over again.

I think that the issue isn’t so much as what the OP is highlighting as much as it is how effective you can burst with conditions versus how effective you can burst with a power spec, and the direct stat allocation it takes to be effective in each category.

First off, condition damage only relies on 1 stat for maximizing DPS (duration is for damage over time). Power damage relies on 3 (Power, Precision, Critical Damage).

Now, sensibly that would mean that power damage, because it takes more stat investment, would have a higher range of damage available than conditions, which only take 1 stat investment.

Unfortunately though, and where the complexity of the situation comes in, is that conditions can be burst, and they can be burst effectively enough that the damage is significant enough to actually making running Power specs, with their less defensive setups, less of an attractive option.
This is because conditions specs, on top of being able to load up a target on almost every single damaging condition in the game in very short, repeatable time frames, also lack strong enough counter measures.

Traits like Dhuumfire and Incendiary Powder, and skills like Sun Spirit, proc a burn for 2-4s every 10 seconds, on top of all of the conditions being put out by a class. What is supposed to deal with that? They are hard to predict procs on very short time spans and the game has a very limited amount of cleanses, and the durations of the burns are so short to begin with that it is very hard to actively react to and deal with them.

What condition builds should be are classes built around sustained DPS through conditions that gradually get stronger and stronger over time, necessitating an eventual well timed cleanse by an opposing player in order for them to win the fight, assuming they aren’t getting outplayed in the “position wars” department. These condition builds should have harder to land skills (aka skill shots with harder to spam cooldown periods) that either stack conditions more fiercely or apply a stronger condition, that introduce the play/counter play mechanic of timing it against players cleanses (do I use it before they use their cleanse in order to get them down to a threshold I know I can finish them off at, or hold off until they’ve used their cleanse so I can hit them with it’s full damage potential).

Instead, what we have now is a bunch of short cooldown, easy to land, strong condition attacks being backed by even stronger passive procs that basically allows players to spam conditions in a burst manner/playstyle, and there is nowhere near enough passive cleansing or enough reactive cleansing to deal with it.

jcbroe.4329:

I think that the issue isn’t so much as what the OP is highlighting as much as it is how effective you can burst with conditions versus how effective you can burst with a power spec, and the direct stat allocation it takes to be effective in each category.

Technically 2 specs for conditions if you include condition duration.

But I believe that is not the problem. Conditions DPS shouldn’t be remedied by spreading more stats.

The problem is the need to spam conditions and there is no thought or punishment in doing so. Like you said, it’s there for sustained DPS but unlike power, the DPS is constant and reliable.

It doesn’t matter if the opponent is at full health or about to die. You are rewarded by
applying 10 stacks of bleeding, 6 seconds of burning or 5 stacks of torment. It’s simply sustained DPS.

• What if Bleeding deals less damage if the opponent has high health but more damage if the opponent is low on health?
• What if Burning deals more damage if the opponent has high health but less if the opponent is low on health?
• What if Torment, instead of stacking and dealing raw damage if the opponent is moving, instead, Torment stacks duration and spreads when enemies go near one another?
• What if confusion, instead of dealing damage on every skills, only deals damage when the opponent hits a foe? However, it’s damage is considerably higher.

You got yourself a system that doesn’t reward spamming but rewards thoughtful play.

But we both have the same idea, conditions need more thoughtful mechanics.

Dagger auto attack is faster than scepter and actually does more damage as a power build. Dagger#3 + wells + auto can burst kitten squishi professions. Play style is more inline with being a thief without stealth. Works well roaming and 1v1 encounters.

Using a scepter as a power build you are sub par on both condition and direct dmg, might as well go full condi. Play style is basically that of a condi build for team fights but much less condi dmg with a touch more direct dmg.

kirito.4138:

Dagger auto attack is faster than scepter and actually does more damage as a power build.

Read Ezrael.6859 post.

Nova Stiker.8396:

kirito.4138:

Dagger auto attack is faster than scepter and actually does more damage as a power build.

Read Ezrael.6859 post.

I Have

kirito.4138:

Nova Stiker.8396:

kirito.4138:

Dagger auto attack is faster than scepter and actually does more damage as a power build.

Read Ezrael.6859 post.

I Have

Good, then you understand why scepter+staff is a good idea on a power necro.

Despite the fact dagger is designed for power necros.

Nova Stiker.8396:

kirito.4138:

Nova Stiker.8396:

kirito.4138:

Dagger auto attack is faster than scepter and actually does more damage as a power build.

Read Ezrael.6859 post.

I Have

Good, then you understand why scepter+staff is a good idea on a power necro.

Despite the fact dagger is designed for power necros.

Its decent, but going full condi would be better if using scepter/staff.

Nova Stiker.8396;

Okay, yeah, we’re on the same page

For a simple solution, I think Dhuumfire and Incendiary Ammo could be nerfed to only be able to proc every 20 seconds. That and/or Dhuumfire should be made into Torment, since Necro already has access to every other condition, except confusion.

Then on top of that, base durations that conditions are lasting, particularly those on auto attacks, need to be reduced significantly. 3-4 bleed stacks should be the maximum that is sustainable through just autoattacking, on autoattacks that apply bleeds.

3 particular classes all have their own quirks.

Necros are good at stacking conditions, but Dhuumfire puts it a little over the top, and then with Terror, you can basically guarantee your conditions tick while adding a new, super powerful tick of fear on top of the rest of the conditions. Dhuumfire changes have already been mentioned, but Terror could probably stand to be reduced in damage, or be made more conditional (scale with the amount of unique conditions more strictly) in order to deal it’s full damage.

Engineers can put almost every condition in the game on you in a near instant, and because of that, have poorer stacking techniques than other classes. That being said, with how sustainable Engineers have the potential to be in fights, the amount of burning they have access to can probably stand to be toned down, mainly Incendiary Ammo, as mentioned earlier, and maybe some duration changes too if it needed to be harsher.

Rangers at their base are probably the most balanced class in terms of base output, and should be made more of the baseline for condition output balance. The issue with rangers, aside from some of the cheese options like Sun Spirit which I already mentioned, is that there are no skill shots to raise the skill ceiling with, making the class a little too simple to play sometimes in a competitive environment, especially particular weapons like the shortbow. Making the class more active, like giving ranger players skill rotations to maximize effectiveness, or something just to invest players attention in and create a necessity for a higher amount of actions per minute would be good.

The original ranger trap build is probably about where condition output should be balanced around though, maybe a little stronger with Necro torment procs and Engi still having more consistent access to burning, as well as confusion.

Just my thoughts though, we all have our own solutions (except ANet who has yet to publicize their solution haha. Not a shot at you devs/mods, just a little humor).

Necro should never ever ever have buring , it was fine before patch , adding torrment would be nice balance + fixing few bugs + reworking few traits and necro would be in great position.

I was playing speter/dagger power necro for quite lomng and it was realy good , the problem is that necro cant use dagger on main becouse if u go close to the enemy = instant dead that why i dont see power necro be vible in top tier competetive team lack stability lack escapse/evade/block skills simple.

40% condition duration, standard traits 30.20.0.0.20. No Earth Sigil.

Count them. 6 ticks of Burning, 4 Bleeds that each last 8 seconds and 5 seconds of Poison. From one 900 range instant hit auto-attack chain that takes 1.5 seconds to complete.

Even if Dhuumfire magically becomes 66% less duration in sPvP you never needed Burning and you never needed Torment. This is just rabid power creep of the devs adding conditions to the game while trying to counter it with more condi removal.

Necros could kill all professions fine before both Dhuumfire and Torment, it used to be a skilled class. Now it’s the epitome of condition spam easymode.

in match u get 3-4s burn and if someone is w8 for whole duration of condis on him then….l2p :P

The problem before patch is that necro was stacking bleeds to slow and there was enough condi remove to basicly negate most of necro dmg , other thing is that zerk stance and AR rngi trait need to be reworekd also , torment is great necro wepon , its realy smart and balanced , u need to be 600 range so risk/reward and also u can dodge/clense/go out of range so its counterable + its great defensive mechanic.

Now devs gonna take our bleeds one by one and leave us with burining , then they will nerf burning and condi necro will run without condis , so stupid.

And Ezrael.6859 right now necro before patch would not be able to kill anything , he could have chance vs ele :P

Of course Necros could kill things before the patch, they have been awesome before. They have been in the meta several times as general conditions, Wells, Epidemic. All before Dhuumfire and Torment. Go look at the old footage when teams actually played this game in tournaments and we had a population above 1000 players, Necros were in high-end teams.

Torment is a terrible mechanic just like Confusion.

It punishes people for moving, you take less damage by standing still but that of course means you have no positioning and are open to attack, so you are punished for playing the game. Just like Confusion punishes you for playing.

These Conditions would only be good if they were very limited in the game, but they aren’t. Torment and Confusion are widely available.

I’ve watched you play Necro and you’re nothing special. You’re just propped up by the current condition overload mechanics that make winning 1v1’s and joining team fights so easy right now for a Necro. Hence you’re such a condition spam apologist.

There’s a reason so many people have quit this game and aren’t coming back, it’s not fun. The condition spam is not a fun mechanic to play against and for any gamer that wants to win fights with skill it’s not a fun mechanic to play as either.

Thats why torment should be necro unique condi , only for encro becouse vs necro its easy to counter and it works fine with necro mechanic

Now general about burning , my solution:
1st make burning scale diffrent , if u have 0 condi dmg bruning hits realy low then more condi dmg better scaling. 2nd nerf buring example 1000 condi dmg burn tick for 600dmg/s , nerf 50% but the longer burning is on you it deals more dmg , lets say 1s 300dmg/ 2s 350 dmg….. number can be reworked just example. 3rd nerf might from 35 power/condi dmg to 25 power /condi dmg

I play necro since 1st beta , and i would like to have my necro before patch but its not my foul what devs did to this class and what i am forced to play to be efective , i dont like to spam 2-3-5 mark , then scepter one but this is how necro works atm and i dont like it and i am not defending the current state of necro. And i dont realy like to be called noob durning game when i killed someone becouse i am playing “brainless condi spam class” its not fun.Necro before patch was in my opion best balanced class in game.

EDIT

Ezrael.6859 when i said that necro was stacking bleed to slow…. i mean after they were buffing other proffenions what made necro low tier class , and it was only becouse of the power creep they made

I find conditions in a pretty good spot right now.

People complain about condition nerfs while fighting in a field of engibombs/necromarks/rangertraps, unable to see all those red circles under their feet, telling them to dodge back. You dont stand still in a 100 blades either, if you do you earn to die. Same goes for condifields. Maybe think first what you could do better instead of crying for nerfs. Theres no reason for more condicleanse at all just because you like to fight in a sea of explosions…

In a competetive point of view, with 10 players who know what they are doing, the game is pretty well balanced about condi/burst dmg. If you compare condiclasses(engi/necro/ranger) with bursting ones(warrior/mesmer/thief), its pretty close to a perfect balance.

Sure there could be some slightly adjustments(for burstbuilds like warrior as well), but much more condi cleanse/less conditions would just destroy the game. Hopefully anet doesnt balance for hotjoiners, instead of bringing the classes on a balanced level from a competetive point of view.

condition have too long duration while boon always too fast to get benefit.

i know anet dislike holy trinity, this is dumb, how would you like to feel 55s poison and cripple, then 5s protection and regen

<3 people complaining about necro burning not realizing all other professions have heavier burning application/duration..

Necro – one trait that applies burning.. that’s it..
Other professions – burning on weapons skills utilities traits etc etc ..

NB: This condition can’t be compared to the bleeding a necro does since all other professions have that too..

About Fear
This should be a necro only skill yet other professions have it..
(Warrior ofcourse) thief and ranger on pet skill/steal.

Then you have the terror traits for a necro allowing longer duration… that’s it .. again..
So how do these few conditions make necro conditionmancer OP?
because they trait for it? Because even as a condition mancer you have to fight your hardest to get a kill?

What peope seem to forget about the necro is that they were meant to be condition based.. and if you can’t see how bad it is to compare condition damage vs direct damage..

“look I take over 10k damage within 10 seconds trough conditions..” vs “look instagib… guess i should learn to dodge on a necro without vigor ^^”

As far as all “necro is OP” related posts above.. you don’t know how wrong you are..

SchuMidas.4782:

condition have too long duration while boon always too fast to get benefit.

i know anet dislike holy trinity, this is dumb, how would you like to feel 55s poison and cripple, then 5s protection and regen

Thats the way it has to be…

How stupid would it be if boons/condi cleanse/heal could negate all condition effects? We would have fights where no one is able to kill the other. Damage(no matter if burst or condi) always needs to be larger than heal. Boons/heal/condi cleanse are made to slow down the process of dieing, not to avoid it…

I’d focus on making offensive conditions more secondary.
They sooo fit the role with how weapons and physical dmg and condi removal and conditions are setup…
I honestly have no idea why they aren’t.

Right now pysical dmg has tons of counterplay, moving more dmg over to physical on once pure condi dps builds would only increase their play/counterplay.
Right now condi’s, to get depth, need to be situational on when to use. They mostly aren’t.
Right now condi removal is sporadic, it’s setup as if builds didn’t NEED to have it to be viable.
Right now tons of skills are just useless depending on whether or not you stack condi dmg… that’s wasted potential.

With that in mind, condi fixes can only seem to go in one direction, global nerfs to condi dmg (buffs/tweaks to debuffing) along with tweaks to physical dmg or amulets to fit that (without making dps bunkers).
If you’re looking to fix condi’s I talked about the whole issue in general a bit ago
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Easy-solution-to-fix-the-meta/first