Guild Wars 2

New conditions.

The issue here is that the servers can’t handle more than a 25 stack bleeding, your problem is that bleeding is the central focus of every condition build since it’s usually the easiest to apply and generally best damage.

Add new damaging conditions, like they did with torment, but switch the central focus of all condition builds away from bleeding.

I read someone’s post once saying the issue here is that auto attacks add stacks of bleeding, this quickly raises the stacks of bleeding with small duration bleeds.

Instead I think (and this individual who’s name I forgot) bleeding should be reserved only for non auto attack skills, add less stacks but for longer duration. That way condition cleansing abilities can be more meaningful and have a bigger impact, and condition builds will be able to fulfill their desires of not being utterly useless.

Not to simply remove bleeding from auto attacks and ruin the damage potential of condition builds, some sort of duration stacking condition should be added to auto attacks instead of intensity stacking.

A neat idea I had was a condition which dealt more damage the longer it remained on a target, this condition would perfectly suit auto attack on a condition weapon. Also staying true to the condition theme which is damage over time.

You’re forgetting that duration stacking conditions (and boons) will be limited to 5 “stacks” after the balance patch this month. Also, the issue will still arise when there’s multiple people. The big problem with Bleeding is the 25 stack limit, and the problem with the duration stacking conditions is that only one tick is happening each second (so if two people apply Burning, there’s still only one damage tick each second). The idea I like (I didn’t come up with it, but can’t recall who did) was to have the lowest damage stack be removed and converted to direct damage if the incoming condition would cause the intensity or duration cap to be reached.

So if you had 15 Bleed stacks that last 10 secs, and 10 Bleed stacks that last 5 secs, and try to apply 3 Bleed stacks that last 7 secs, 3 of the 5 sec stacks would be converted to direct damage, and you’d now have… 15 stacks for 10 secs, 7 stacks for 5 secs and 3 stacks for 7 secs. It’s worth noting that player’s Condition Damage could make duration not be the main factor, but this is a good basic concept. A similar setup can be done with duration stacking conditions by converting the stack with the shortest time left (since they’re capping them at 5 “stacks” then this means they can track the individual ones as well).

I’ve seen the “convert a stack into direct damage” suggestion many times but I think that very severely breaks the idea and concept behind the whole point of conditions and condition damage. If you’re gonna convert a smaller stack into direct damage why not just make all conditions direct damage?

It breaks the theme really hard and because of that I doubt that would actually be used by Anet.

The main issue is how condition damage has a cap based on how many condition builds are together. So if there are 2 or 3 condition builds together they start negating each other’s damage.

However when you change the main condition focus from an intensity stacking condition to a duration stacking condition, instead of negating each other the condition builds will actually help each other.

Also, using a condition which deals more damage the longer it stays on the target will make that “helping each other” thing even better. Since it becomes stronger the longer it’s in effect it also has the “feel” of an intensity stacking condition, since the damage becomes higher the more duration you stack.

So it doesn’t matter that it ticks only once per second if it’ll tick once stronger and stronger each second, so it’s the effect of bleeding without the cap. The longer the battle draws out, and the more condition builds are present the more damage this condition would deal.

I was giving it some thought earlier and came up with a very simplistic way this would play out.

It would start by dealing 15% of your condition damage as damage every second, and every second the damage would go up by 1%. So the first tick would deal 15% damage, the second would deal 16% damage, then 17%, 18%, 19% etc. Or something less rapid.

The last player to add to the stack would be the one dealing the damage, like how burning works. I imagine there should be a cap to the amount of damage it can scale up to, something along the lines of 250% of your condition damage each second being max. Details don’t matter, it’s just the idea.

So this way if you had a Tequatl-like event and you had some 50 condition builds, the condition damage wouldn’t explode instantly, instead it’s slowly rise through out the battle as more condition builds would stack more duration for this condition, thus helping each other out and keeping constant damage like the direct damage builds.

I dunno, doesn’t even have to be that. It could even be more simple, you could just have like some 5 different conditions that all act the exact same way as bleed. But each class would have primary access to only one of those.

Maybe a combination of both types of conditions.

Solution to condition cap is simple. Every time it gets to 25 stacks, an upgraded condition is transformed from the previous stack of conditions (i.e 1 stack of “deep wound” is equivalent to 25 stacks of bleeding with the damage as the entire 25 stacks of bleeding). They could technically do this unlimited amount of time and in addition it would still be balanced in PvP.

Chase.8415:

Solution to condition cap is simple. Every time it gets to 25 stacks, an upgraded condition is transformed from the previous stack of conditions (i.e 1 stack of “deep wound” is equivalent to 25 stacks of bleeding with the damage as the entire 25 stacks of bleeding). They could technically do this unlimited amount of time and in addition it would still be balanced in PvP.

That’s actually something I thought about as well, with the same mechanics and name too.

Chase.8415:

Solution to condition cap is simple. Every time it gets to 25 stacks, an upgraded condition is transformed from the previous stack of conditions (i.e 1 stack of “deep wound” is equivalent to 25 stacks of bleeding with the damage as the entire 25 stacks of bleeding). They could technically do this unlimited amount of time and in addition it would still be balanced in PvP.

I like this idea.

I don’t like the idea with the conversion into one big condition, because there are too many questions.

How does it scale? does it do a fixed ammount of damage, percentage damage, condition damage of one in the crowed?
If it does fixed damage, berserker groups could just take a sigil of earth and increase their overall damage output with it. If it is done with the condition damage of one random guy, it could also be a berserker with 0 Cond. damage, …

Who does damage belong to? as mentioned above a random guy, everyone, … ? (but if we do more damage this is less important for me)

What would be the duration of this mega bleed? everage of all current bleeds, fixed 10 sec, … ?

What happens with burning, confusion and poison? Those two are limited to only one per group. Do they get a bigger stack, and then a better condition as well?

Other solution:

• Don’t update condition damage every second (i.e. due to more might), just make them fire and forget to reduce Server Load/calculations
• Add several Slots for burning, confusion and poison, because these are high damage conditions.
• a) increase the stacklimit by size of the enemy and probably remove the minor trait that gives a chance to bleed a foe, because berserker crit a lot and steal condition slots (I don’t like that idea)
  or b) give every player a single Condition slot, that stacks in intensity (the formula is some sort of a floating average). So there is only one big number per player that ticks per second instead of x small numbers (well that will change soon, but it is only a visual change). This also reduces Server Load, because it “only adds” the damage to the slot and does not have to check several conditions duration.

Ideally, they wouldn’t bother with tracking stacks at all, since it seems to be a technical resource drain. It seems like there are ways to work around the issue, though it might require some core changes to combat or character development to eliminate the necessary of remembering the link between a condition and the condition supplier.

Chase.8415:

Solution to condition cap is simple. Every time it gets to 25 stacks, an upgraded condition is transformed from the previous stack of conditions (i.e 1 stack of “deep wound” is equivalent to 25 stacks of bleeding with the damage as the entire 25 stacks of bleeding). They could technically do this unlimited amount of time and in addition it would still be balanced in PvP.

Finally a reasonable and constructive suggestion. That I can get behind.

raise condition stack limit to over 9000 !

Conditions need to be on par with Crit Direct Damage. If you say you can crit for 15k every 2.8 seconds (Thief traited for Stealth+Backstab) then the top Condition build should be able to push that much damage in the same time period. But there should be conditions that are met for it to be possible.

I always though that condition classes are support/control roles. Meaning, if you are doing Dots on your target you are also doing things to cripple their abilities (Healing, movement, Attack speed, Stun, …ect) Let the condition damage scale with the debuff control you (as the attacking player) have up on the target. The more control you have in place, the more damage you do. And instead of Precision for a secondary stat (Currently we have power being turned into condition stat) we should have a special secondary stat for condition builds. My Idea on this at the end.

Since Conditions cannot crit, we should look at what conditions actually do. They are small hits that are rapid (Bleeds pop every .7 of a second, Burning is about every 1.2 seconds, Confusion is based on targets skill use. So once every 2-5 seconds…depending on target). And they do not scale well. If you have multiple bleeders attacking the same target, then they are fighting for damage done.

What about a buff that you get for reaching max bleeds, or max time on Burning, max Confusion Stacks. So that when you hit max stacks, the next condition application does the total damage of your condition x25 + 5%(for the missing Crit on Condition Attacks). And its only based on your current target, when you swap targets the buff resets to 0. And while you are building the buff(Max is 25, and resets to 0 at 25), your Debuffs get a boost (Maybe more Time on the target for movement impairment, double stacks for Confusion, Chance for attack to fail due to intense burning….ect).

really, with this idea we can go anywhere.

But this is also why I have been thinking that for condition ‘power’ builds we need something like Precision. Since Conditions cannot crit, Precision is almost useless for condition builds. But if we had a new system in place that benefited a support/control role that was teamed with the power of condition damage, why not have ‘Intensity’. The more intensity the more condition damage you at the 25th stack, and the more effective your debuffs are, and the faster you can climb to that 25th stack.

sure, this sound a bit over powered. But compared to a power class that can crit 15k every 2.8-3seconds (I have a thief that can do just that). I think its time something like this starts to be looked at seriously.

Condition builds dont burst. But there is no reason why we cannot have the same damage done in a 45second window that power builds can do. And since we dont burst, we add in control to our attacks.

sirsquishy.8531:

Conditions need to be on par with Crit Direct Damage. If you say you can crit for 15k every 2.8 seconds (Thief traited for Stealth+Backstab) then the top Condition build should be able to push that much damage in the same time period. But there should be conditions that are met for it to be possible.

With conditons you are able to deal between 5-6k DPS under the best circumstances.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Condition-damage-is-a-joke/first#post2960997
15k over 3 sec isn’t that much, compared to a warrior with 100b + Axe(1) rotation. should be about 7-10k DPS.
BUT you can’t compare them with direct damage, because conditions ignore the armor of the target. So if condition builds would do this amount of damage against every enemy it would be OP.

On the other hand, there is no boss design, that benefits Condition damage (high armor, low HP).

sirsquishy.8531:

I always though that condition classes are support/control roles. Meaning, if you are doing Dots on your target you are also doing things to cripple their abilities (Healing, movement, Attack speed, Stun, …ect) Let the condition damage scale with the debuff control you (as the attacking player) have up on the target. The more control you have in place, the more damage you do. And instead of Precision for a secondary stat (Currently we have power being turned into condition stat) we should have a special secondary stat for condition builds. My Idea on this at the end.

Condition damage and control synergies very well, because of the shared stat (cond. duration) but you lose a lot of damage, when you spec for control.
For Support i would probably go for direct damage or tanky spec.

We need precision to get our bleeds on the target (traits and sigil or earth) and that is about 50% of the bleed applied. A new stat combination (cond. dmg., cond. duration and precision) would be nice.

sirsquishy.8531:

Since Conditions cannot crit, we should look at what conditions actually do. They are small hits that are rapid (Bleeds pop every .7 of a second, Burning is about every 1.2 seconds, Confusion is based on targets skill use. So once every 2-5 seconds…depending on target). And they do not scale well. If you have multiple bleeders attacking the same target, then they are fighting for damage done.

What about a buff that you get for reaching max bleeds, or max time on Burning, max Confusion Stacks. So that when you hit max stacks, the next condition application does the total damage of your condition x25 + 5%(for the missing Crit on Condition Attacks). And its only based on your current target, when you swap targets the buff resets to 0. And while you are building the buff(Max is 25, and resets to 0 at 25), your Debuffs get a boost (Maybe more Time on the target for movement impairment, double stacks for Confusion, Chance for attack to fail due to intense burning….ect).

really, with this idea we can go anywhere.

Wouldn’t that change us to be some sort of direct damage dealer?
And more important it would destroy the idea of a DoT!

The biggest fight for a condition class is the stack limit, this has to be removed.
Or increased in a way, that we can’t reach it.

sirsquishy.8531:

But this is also why I have been thinking that for condition ‘power’ builds we need something like Precision. Since Conditions cannot crit, Precision is almost useless for condition builds.

As mentioned above, you put the cart before the horse. We need crits to apply a lot of our conditions. If conditions are only applied by spells the stack limit is no problem anymore in a group of 5 .

compared to direct damage our stats are:
power = cond. damage
crit. chance = (crit. chance * proc chance)
crit. damage = condition duration

Those stats synergies very well and I think they are not the problem.

sirsquishy.8531:

But if we had a new system in place that benefited a support/control role that was teamed with the power of condition damage, why not have ‘Intensity’. The more intensity the more condition damage you at the 25th stack, and the more effective your debuffs are, and the faster you can climb to that 25th stack.

I dont think, that your idea would benefit support/control roles, because we still have defiant/unshackable that stops us.
If our controlls cant effect the boss, control roles are useless.
There was a suggestion like a “rage mode” giving the boss CC immunity, movespeed and more damage if he is interrupted to often (like three times in 10 seconds)

sirsquishy.8531:

sure, this sound a bit over powered. But compared to a power class that can crit 15k every 2.8-3seconds (I have a thief that can do just that). I think its time something like this starts to be looked at seriously.

Condition builds dont burst. But there is no reason why we cannot have the same damage done in a 45second window that power builds can do. And since we dont burst, we add in control to our attacks.

Condition damage is fine, it could be a bit more or effected by the +X% damage effects. The bigger problem is, that there is content, where condition damage can shine (high armor low hp bosses) and the stack limit, making us useless.

Chase.8415:

Solution to condition cap is simple. Every time it gets to 25 stacks, an upgraded condition is transformed from the previous stack of conditions (i.e 1 stack of “deep wound” is equivalent to 25 stacks of bleeding with the damage as the entire 25 stacks of bleeding). They could technically do this unlimited amount of time and in addition it would still be balanced in PvP.

I had thought of this idea before as well, it does have some complications though. You’d have to average out the time and damage of that 25 stacks of bleed so that you’re not doing more or less damage than is warranted. Assigning credit/agro is also an issue when you do this transfer, do you give credit immediately upon application of the deep wound or do you do it per tick? If you allow it to be removed, then you can’t give credit immediately, if you do it per tick, then you still have 25 different pointers to people for only 1 stack of deep wound (for the purpose of assigning credit/agro.) And then there’s the issue of Epidemic, which would need a serious rebalance.

Simplest solution:

When stacks reach 25 they are converted to one single condition of equivalent damage. Duration could perhaps be the average of those stacks.

Everyone who contributedtothe stack is reported as doing the damage.

Now a new stack can start being built.

Minimum server load, easy to implement, simple to understand.

Edit: kitten , too late, Chase already suggested this. Haha