Guild Wars 2

Why are the two not balanced, This is such a huge flaw for the game… giving max DPS while max health/armor…

Dire should be on equal playing terms with Soldier

Condi should require precision & ferocity to hit its max DPS not a single stat.

Why can we not give conditions a crit and crit damage while toning down their base damage?

Just by reading this I can tell OP is fairly new and this is an L2P issue, not a balance issue.

Eh, there is something to it, but you’re forgetting about condi clears. I’d personally like to see Dire deleted from the game though, because the risk:reward is way off.

Choppy.4183:

Eh, there is something to it, but you’re forgetting about condi clears. I’d personally like to see Dire deleted from the game though, because the risk:reward is way off.

That is what gw2 is about , why do you thing what is makign the game growing in popularity and more players?

LionChain.7694:

Just by reading this I can tell OP is fairly new and this is an L2P issue, not a balance issue.

Yeah not really. Dire always has been unbalanced when compared to any other stat spread.

Dire give max dps now? Last I checked I was fully dependant on 50%+ crit chance to use all my apply-condi-on-crit traits to their full potential :/

Its really only OP because the way condis are applied for certain classes, making some of them insanely unbalanced at high condi numbers. That is whats not balanced. Not condi dmg itself.

The condi and power are already balanced but not the way you are assuming.

Consider this: 10000 damage in a single burst is lot more valuable than 10000 damage over long period of time.

Making conditions crit would remove one of the differences between the two making the game less varied.

You could argue that condition damage is underpowered in large fights in WvW. Allowing conditions to crit would not solve that. Condition damage is weak due the multi-target cleanses.

Aeolus.3615:

Choppy.4183:

Eh, there is something to it, but you’re forgetting about condi clears. I’d personally like to see Dire deleted from the game though, because the risk:reward is way off.

That is what gw2 is about , why do you thing what is makign the game growing in popularity and more players?

Sarcasm, I presume. If not, how so?

ummm…. dire doesn’t have precision or expertise….. so yeah, not max dps. Not even max dps for a pure condi build.

I had to double check the date on this thread to make sure somebody didn’t necro one from 2015. Are you sure you didn’t mean to kitten about trailblazer or maybe even viper?

If condition damage alone cant or isnt supposed crit what’s the point of adding precision in with any pure condi stats. Rabid is the real problem here, not dire, get rid of rabid. Give everyone the option of true dire trinkets, or instead of the +18 precision 4 Stat laurel ones, change it to +18 condi duration instead (ie trailblazers), that’ll fix the balance issue for those silly plex mesmers and give the power crowd something new to complain about.

LionChain.7694:

Just by reading this I can tell OP is fairly new and this is an L2P issue, not a balance issue.

I can tell the OP plays small-scale WvW (which is where we are in the forums). Dire is mathematically imbalanced to total absurdity for the damage it enables, and because everyone and their mother has permanent protection uptime these days.

If we for example buffed Soldier’s gear into Dire’s power-per-stat assuming a 50% condi clear rate on the enemy (which is absolutely crazy, btw), and then balanced the game by this, I could reach a 50k backstab on my thief in Valkyrie gear based on necessary power scaling, lol.

It’s not the best condition damage output – Viper’s gear is – however in most instances it comes very close, since it enables higher damage per tick via food and other conversions all things considered.

The stat combo is totally broken.

As far as burst vs conditions in the race for (above-mentioned) 10k damage, you need to look into application frequency and uptime potential. I can tell you now that any condition build is going to have much better damage uptime than correlating power builds. Conditions are very easy to access in the game, while getting huge-hitting power skills with the same degree of consistency often takes longer in the scope of cooldowns. There are some counterexamples, but not as many.

The more reasonable comparison is:

Berserker DPS vs. Hybrid DPS.

Solider DPS vs. Dire DPS.

These kinds of threads are generally the bunker meta vs zerker meta argument recast to blame the condition bunker variant on account of the kind of damage being done. I’ve seen plenty of power bunkers rip down zerkers because they have enough time to react/defend.

And, just to point out, don’t treat conditions as magical fairy dust that just appears on you by accident. I hit you. With my pistol. Dodge, reflect, blind, block, resistance, cleanse. All of those work. If you play zerker and I hit you with the power variant of my build…you are going to feel it just the same. Only you won’t be able to cleanse it.

saerni.2584:

The more reasonable comparison is:

Berserker DPS vs. Hybrid DPS.

Solider DPS vs. Dire DPS.

These kinds of threads are generally the bunker meta vs zerker meta argument recast to blame the condition bunker variant on account of the kind of damage being done. I’ve seen plenty of power bunkers rip down zerkers because they have enough time to react/defend.

And, just to point out, don’t treat conditions as magical fairy dust that just appears on you by accident. I hit you. With my pistol. Dodge, reflect, blind, block, resistance, cleanse. All of those work. If you play zerker and I hit you with the power variant of my build…you are going to feel it just the same. Only you won’t be able to cleanse it.

The thread is already comparing dire vs soldier, and it’s calling out condi specifically because of the damage output relative to the stat investment. Sure, a power bunker could kill a zerker build in some cases (“rip down” is a stretch), but people don’t complain so much about that because it’s more or less seen as a reasonable damage:defense trade off.

I have yet to see condition damage DPS that comes even close to power DPS.

Maxed out with unreasonable buffs, most DPS charts I’ve seen show condition damage at most at 18k. What is power DPS at, 30-35k? These are in ideal circumstances but do give an indication that power DPS is, in fact, much higher than condition damage.

Your real issue is that conditions are designed with cleanse in mind. Also, by design, not all conditions are meant to be cleansed. Condition builds are designed to do damage via conditions…so naturally the cleanse rate will never be 100%. So DPS will always be unreasonably high if you have no cleanse. If you have average cleanse the DPS will be as expected, lower like soldier’s. If you have high cleanse or AoE group cleanse then the DPS falls to almost zero.

Soldier’s won’t do as much damage against high armor targets. Dire won’t do as much against high cleanse targets. Sure, you could remove cleanse from the game and decrease condition application/damage, but I have the feeling that wouldn’t solve the “problem.” People would still be in here talking about how half as much DPS, or even a quarter of DPS applied over time is OP.

Dire and Soldiers should absolutely be in line with each other. Yes, condition clears exist – but so does invulnerability and skills like endure pain and stone signet that completely mitigate all raw damage too.

As I’ve said before, conditions need a total rework. They should be effected by ferocity and crit chance.

saerni.2584:

I have yet to see condition damage DPS that comes even close to power DPS.

Maxed out with unreasonable buffs, most DPS charts I’ve seen show condition damage at most at 18k. What is power DPS at, 30-35k? These are in ideal circumstances but do give an indication that power DPS is, in fact, much higher than condition damage.

Your real issue is that conditions are designed with cleanse in mind. Also, by design, not all conditions are meant to be cleansed. Condition builds are designed to do damage via conditions…so naturally the cleanse rate will never be 100%. So DPS will always be unreasonably high if you have no cleanse. If you have average cleanse the DPS will be as expected, lower like soldier’s. If you have high cleanse or AoE group cleanse then the DPS falls to almost zero.

Soldier’s won’t do as much damage against high armor targets. Dire won’t do as much against high cleanse targets. Sure, you could remove cleanse from the game and decrease condition application/damage, but I have the feeling that wouldn’t solve the “problem.” People would still be in here talking about how half as much DPS, or even a quarter of DPS applied over time is OP.

Yeah, but you have to go to application. A huge amount of dps for direct damage builds are in highly telegraphed, high damage hits. Have a real person dodge a couple of those, and then compare that to a couple of dodges against a condi build.

And I’m not even a condi hater. Imo, it’s an interesting part of the game, but dire is clearly out of line with soldiers from a risk:reward perspective..

It’s a bit tricky comparing Dire to Soldier DPS (condition vs physical damage) because conditions ignore toughness. A good test would be to have a full Dire build fight a full glass player(maybe with some vitality) with an average amount of condition cleanses, and then compare that to a full Soldier build fighting that same full glass player. It would be a bit hard to set up a perfect test considering player skill and some classes have stronger condition builds and vice versa, but I would guess that Dire builds would do better overall.

It would only depend on the builds used and on the playstyle of the players, not on the gear. So yea, soldier might be able to actually outdmg dire with certain classes/builds, dire will be better on other occasions …

It is not like you could equip full dire gear on any class, use some random condi traits and skills and get an op build, that’s not how it works.

And anet will never remove gear, so condis should (and can) be balanced arround skills and traits with the existance of dire gear in mind.

saerni.2584:

I have yet to see condition damage DPS that comes even close to power DPS.

Maxed out with unreasonable buffs, most DPS charts I’ve seen show condition damage at most at 18k. What is power DPS at, 30-35k? These are in ideal circumstances but do give an indication that power DPS is, in fact, much higher than condition damage.

Your real issue is that conditions are designed with cleanse in mind. Also, by design, not all conditions are meant to be cleansed. Condition builds are designed to do damage via conditions…so naturally the cleanse rate will never be 100%. So DPS will always be unreasonably high if you have no cleanse. If you have average cleanse the DPS will be as expected, lower like soldier’s. If you have high cleanse or AoE group cleanse then the DPS falls to almost zero.

Soldier’s won’t do as much damage against high armor targets. Dire won’t do as much against high cleanse targets. Sure, you could remove cleanse from the game and decrease condition application/damage, but I have the feeling that wouldn’t solve the “problem.” People would still be in here talking about how half as much DPS, or even a quarter of DPS applied over time is OP.

PvE DPS is completely incomparable to PvP and WvW. The measurements also assume max boons/support from a perfect group composition, which favors berserker/power setups through scaling via bonuses to ferocity getting a little more mileage as opposed to conditions. The thief and ele builds dominating said DPS potential on keywords large, stationary targets (multi-hit/AoE attacks like Meteor Shower, Weakening Strike) are so incredibly useless in PvP/WvW that it’s obvious who runs their PvE gear when they play to a point of being one-shotted by medium-coefficient skills in some cases. Said condition builds you’re comparing to often have very little support from chaining utilities for damage, unlike their power counterparts, and thus have intrinsically more functional builds for a broader set of circumstances.

Yea, theoretically the maximum DPS on power builds is higher. That also assumes the target has no toughness, though. With just protection alone (again something found very often permanently on many classes now), the damage outputs match up, again, still insisting low toughness, as .7 * 30k = 21k ~= optimal condi DPS. Given a few aura removals, this will regulate as even a 10-15% loss to power matches them evenly. Further, most condition-oriented lines are strictly better on defenses than power DPS/crit ones, anyways. If you fight without boons at all, condi and power DPS is actually pretty similar across the build spectrum. Power just gets more DPS mileage, and it should, objectively, because it has three stats modifying damage output exponentially, rather than just one. Again, objectively, when looking at the required bonuses, power should actually be doing more relative damage based on the amount of dependencies there are to manage its superiority.

Your definitions of “average cleanse” are unclear and in some cases, totally untrue. Some classes have intrinsically more cleanses than others. Up until recently, the thief had only one way to remove confusion, which shared a 50s cooldown with their most important reposition skill, and still hits the thief for two skill activation procs just to cleanse it. Then you have classes like ele and necro which have huge amounts of innate cleanses and transfers on major and common build features. It’s not only physically impossible to reach this on a thief, for example, but would require quite literally every trait and skill to come close. In almost all cases, soldier’s DPS is lower than that of any condition build against any other build. Only in a few cases like fighting a bunker earth/water ele or tank druid will the stat distributions find themselves sitting roughly equal, because neither will be able to kill the opposition from just having too low of damage.

Again, even at a 50% cleanse rate of condition application – equivocal to 50% dodge uptime against power, and doesn’t require dodge foresight of incoming attacks, reducing skill dependency, (which is absolutely bonkers high), condition damage alone per attack (thus, dire) per unit of time regardless of context is strictly better than what soldier’s gear can achieve against a glass foe, and rivals that of Berserker facing protection. Yet this can be done on a build with two defensive stats, AND doesn’t get negated by protection nor high toughness, which as discussed, having permanent access to the former is common. Plus, application can deal its full damage to blocking targets and thus has fewer counters, as the DoT from previous attacks will be upheld, continuing DPS whereas power players hit short-term 0 values (which, if you didn’t notice, block access got way more common in HoT). In small-scale WvW, resistance isn’t even remotely as accessible as protection, and even in large-scale, it’s achievable only through certain comps via mass boon-sharing and AoE boon distribution methods, to which a few players will be vulnerable from mass corruption, and strips/corruption/boonsteal mechanisms are much more common in small-scale encounters, anyways, with an increased number of thieves, mesmers, interrupt builds, and typically reapers.

As per what has been suggested in light of your refusal to admit this stat combination is objectively overpowered, condition damage should be normalized with power and require or depend on to achieve similar DPS as berserker/assassin’s mix gear, three stats (say, maybe ferocity affecting conditions on crit and then setting toughness to negate condition damage). Further, resistance and protection should be normalized to be impermanent or removed entirely, and cleanses normalized across professions and builds more as to enable consistency when playing as or against condition builds, making encounters more about the fight instead of the build.

I’m not sure what condition builds you are talking about “not using utilities to increase damage.” More than half of my potential DPS comes from utilities. This applies to both power and condition builds—Basi Venom on thieves for example doesn’t strictly do damage itself, but does help with applying damage in the first place.

Anyway to answer your questions: Average cleanse means usually having more than one way to clear conditions. Usually it is built into the utilities, or through a passive in the build itself. Below average means, having a single or no condition clear. Basically, if the person meets a condition focused build they are going to die. Above average means the classes you mentioned, with many redundant cleanses and AoE cleanse.

Thieves, your example, are a high cleanse class—to make up for lack of HP—cleanse on dodge, cleanse on trick, cleanse in stealth, cleanse on various utilities, cleanse on attacking, cleanse on being hit below % hp. Before the change, withdraw could cleanse that confusion, and now we have even more options.

If the only examples of condition damage dire being comparatively better than soldiers come from the same two classes, then maybe it isn’t the armor that needs tuning. Also, given how often I see complaints based on toughness “doing nothing” I seriously doubt one of the stats in dire is as important as is being implied.

EDIT—Part of GW2 is build crafting. Saying the fight starts when you start smacking each other is inaccurate. It starts when you spend care in deciding how your traits, armor, weapons, and utilities should best interact to win fights.

You can’t clear damage from a zerker before it takes effect.

Ben K.6238:

You can’t clear damage from a zerker before it takes effect.

Every skill that grants Invulnerability ( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invulnerability)
Every skill that does blind ( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blind )

You were saying?

Soldiers is at a huge disadvantage because it has to cut through vitality AND toughness. Dire only needs to cut through Vitality. A Soldier based build better have a lot of cleanse to survive a Dire build. A Dire build can effectively laugh at the DPS from a Soldier based build.

An example, my condi thief build (Dire/Plex) runs with nearly 3100 armor, 22k HP, 1800 condi and can drop nearly a dozen stacks of confusion, torment, bleed, etc in a few seconds. It can reapply bleeds and torment constantly. Thanks to Plex and Toxic Crystals it even has solid confusion duration. Plex Mesmers are also in a similar boat.

saerni.2584:

If the only examples of condition damage dire being comparatively better than soldiers come from the same two classes, then maybe it isn’t the armor that needs tuning.

Thieves, mesmers, necros, eles, and probably necros. Possibly (and probably) warriors too, but I haven’t noticed it yet. Run those with soldiers gear and compare them to dire.

saerni.2584:

Also, given how often I see complaints based on toughness “doing nothing” I seriously doubt one of the stats in dire is as important as is being implied.

By that rationale, nobody should be running dire over carrion. Power is undeniably useful, so people running dire would be irrational if toughness did “nothing”. You know this, it’s why you presumably run dire instead of carrion yourself.

Toughness is important, just not enough so that soldier’s gear is made useless or less useful than Dire. I take Dire because of the survivability in general. I don’t, however, think that it makes me more survivable than say a soldier gear warrior with average condition clearing abilities.

In an average situation, with average condition clears, a Dire vs. Soldier’s should be effectively equal. I think that is roughly the case now.

Now in terms of class balance 9/10 I will kill the warrior. But that is because I have superior mobility and many warriors are highly melee oriented. I also have a lot of stun breaks traited/prepared and as a Daredevil am effectively immune from movement impairing conditions. What I mean is that a lot of the complaints about conditions are based around class balance issues, not stat combination issues. Are some classes more powerful with Dire? Maybe? But that seems like a tuning issue that has nothing to do with the set itself—essentially if there are problems to be fixed the solution will be with individual skills and traits and not with an armor set.

To balance by removing an entire armor set is like trying to carve a Greek statue with a sledge hammer.

Again, it’s not just survivability, it’s the trade-off between defense and offense. The soldier warrior in your example, will have way lower damage output than your thief. A thief geared in soldier would also have way lower output than you would in your gear because, due to the nature of condi damage, you’ve had to sacrifice less damage to get your vitality and toughness than has the person in soldiers.

I find a thief—properly traited—will negate almost all of my condition damage and reset the fight. So in that sense, actually, soldier will do more damage than me.

If he didn’t have any condition clears I would probably kill him. Simple as that.

People act as though a soldier should only have to wear the armor to be immune to conditions. If you are tanky, trait both to be successful in all situations. If you are zerker, expect to have to evade/block everything if you don’t want to take the hit and possibly die.

Being survivable means being flexible. An inflexible thief is a dead thief.

Pulmonary Impact – which can be the main dmg source of d/p daredevils – can hit quite hard in soldier gear. Against certain builds the soldier thief might be better than the dire one …
Soldiers hambow warrior was once meta, even considered op by some. Now it can’t compete with the overpowered new specs of course, but that’s not because of the gear which hasn’t changed … Soldier builds can deal “ok” dmg, which might be enough to kill some. Dire builds can’t kill everything either.

Also keep in mind, condi builds lose less dmg by using defensive stats, true – but they also gain less by going more offensive statwise.

Usually it is dire > soldier but zerk > sinister/viper.

XTR.9604:

Ben K.6238:

You can’t clear damage from a zerker before it takes effect.

Every skill that grants Invulnerability ( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invulnerability)
Every skill that does blind ( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blind )

You were saying?

If you can’t land a hit you can’t apply condi. Exceptions would be passive proc or unblockable stuff…which power based skills have as well.

The main issue is a couple of classes that can tank up with dire or even rabid and dish out insane condi application. Throw in perplex runes to make it worse. Not sure I can agree with this being a soldiers vs dire thing. The effectiveness of dire/rabid/trail depends heavily on the class.