Guild Wars 2

Hello folks,

I’m opening this thread in WvW forum because I feel like it’s where it belongs : PvP uses different mechanics, and PvE is less critical on this matter. I want here to share some thoughts abot balance, diversity, the condi meta, and the fights in general. I don’t want to rant or ask for nerfs or say whatever way of playing is lame. I’ll focus mainly on small scale. Zergs work because of numbers.

There’re mainly two ways of dealing damage : direct damage and condi damage. From my point of view, I’m seeing two main trends :

1. Use of condi damage ; it has not always been.
2. Fast paced fight, and/or “one-way fights”, i.e. long range kiting or stunlock. Hence “one-way”, because the other protagonist can’t really take part.

Why condi damage ?
It’s a matter of effectiveness, so, how are damages mitigated ? Through stats and boons. Vitality, healing and regeneration provide broad sustain. Toughness and protection are specific to direct damage, while resistance is specific to condi damage. As a result (or is it just a coincidence ?), access to vitality is harder :

• 4 stats gear : major in one, minor in 3 ; toughness is major in 4, and minor in 2
• 3 stats gear : major in 2, minor in 6 ; toughness is major in 5, and minor in 6.

I didn’t quote them all, yet vitality stats don’t seem to be the most popular ones, dire put apart. Adding to the boonshare effect, and liberal access to protection, it leaves most classes more vulnerable to conditions than direct damage.

How can balance and diversity be brought ?
Here’s my suggestion. Make fights longer by strongly increasing base HP in every classes. The outcome of a fight will then be determined by whom can have the better sustain. And thus, allow class-gimmicks. They’re not hard to find, here’re some examples :

• Warrior : high baseline stats
• Ranger : long-range, pets, access to boons
• Mesmer : use of decoys
• Guardian : high heal, condi cleanse, access to boons
• Elementalist/Revenant : jack of all trade, switch between mechanics
• Thief : hit and run tactics, stealth and disengage.

I’m mentionning here ways of dealing with a long fight, not ways of dealing damage on purpose.
Currently, I feel like the most unbalanced thing is the ability for direct damage to kill in roughly one spike, meaning the other one won’t be able to activate its own mechanics. It’s “thief tactics” (no offense here), not suited to every class.

Condi system may be slightly better on this topic, because it takes time to work, so the fight can linger. Yet, the “dire” stats makes it really hard for the victim to do a comeback, usually because of its lower HP pool.

Last but not least, having a higher HP pool would prevent stunlock tactics because once all the CC are cleared or expire, the victim still has enough HP to hold its land.

TL;DR
Condi currently works better because there’re more ways to mitigate direct damage than condis. Access to vitality stat thus becomes critical.
The best way to bring more balanced fights and diversity would be to increase base HP in every classes. As the fight wouldn’t end at first strike, it’d allow profession specific mechanics to become efficient in sustain management.

not sure I agree, condi cleanse is very effective an can be pushed at almost any time , in large scale fights depending on your cleanse you may wait for 3 different ones to accumulate. Direct damage, dodge block is all pre-emptive and more difficult to manage bar ‘toughness’ which post elite isn’t that effective. Post condi uncap I’d like to see it manageble, so the largest damage on the left (with number of ticks) and then the next and so on, so you can easily see whats happening, and and cleanse is applied to the first/largest- to balance it out. In wvw stability and boon sharing I believe are more significant issues.

I’m not sure that the best answer to power creep is health creep. It would however reduce 1 shot kills, and I’m sure lazy players would welcome not having to dodge.

I don’t understand where this condition meta is.
The only meta condition damage dealer is reaper and that is it.
All other profession meta are power. So your criteria is that not even one profession is allowed to play condition as an optimal build?

Even in PvP, you have about 50-50 split on condition and power. How does that make condition overpowered?

Ways to mitigate power damage:
Dodge, block, invulnerability, Protection, Aegis, Toughness

Ways to mitigate condition damage:
Dodge, block, invulnerability, Resistance, cleanse, Vitality

Time it takes to deal 10 – 20k damage with power:
Between 1 and 10 seconds

Time it takes to deal 10 – 20k damage with conditions:
Between 15 and 30 seconds

After your health has disappeared from a large critical hit from power, that’s it. Your health is gone. You can heal, if your heal is available, or it’s gone forever.

After enough conditions are applied to you that they could potentially deal a massive amount of damage (eg. having 15 stacks of Bleed transferred to you from a Necromancer), your health is still there but going down quickly. You can remove the Bleeds or apply Resistance if you have access to it negating the damage completely. Imagine if you landed a 20k Gunflame (Berserker F1 burst skill) and someone “cleansed” the damage and went back to full health. That would be pretty annoying, don’t you think?

Conditions are fine. Players are just moronic.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Ways to mitigate power damage:
Dodge, block, invulnerability, Protection, Aegis, Toughness

Ways to mitigate condition damage:
Dodge, block, invulnerability, Resistance, cleanse, Vitality

Time it takes to deal 10 – 20k damage with power:
Between 1 and 10 seconds

Time it takes to deal 10 – 20k damage with conditions:
Between 15 and 30 seconds

After your health has disappeared from a large critical hit from power, that’s it. Your health is gone. You can heal, if your heal is available, or it’s gone forever.

After enough conditions are applied to you that they could potentially deal a massive amount of damage (eg. having 15 stacks of Bleed transferred to you from a Necromancer), your health is still there but going down quickly. You can remove the Bleeds or apply Resistance if you have access to it negating the damage completely. Imagine if you landed a 20k Gunflame (Berserker F1 burst skill) and someone “cleansed” the damage and went back to full health. That would be pretty annoying, don’t you think?

Conditions are fine. Players are just moronic.

I lol’d. How is it that you don’t understand that a condi class can stack mitigation + damage so much more effectively than a power class?

Exciton.8942:

I don’t understand where this condition meta is.
The only meta condition damage dealer is reaper and that is it.
All other profession meta are power. So your criteria is that not even one profession is allowed to play condition as an optimal build?

Even in PvP, you have about 50-50 split on condition and power. How does that make condition overpowered?

I’m not talking about PvP, as stats are given from another mechanic. I was mostly sharing thoughts about the so-called condi meta that some people here are complaining about.

I mostly play condi, and I enjoy it. Matter of taste. My wish is everyone should be able to play the fashion he likes, and enjoy it too.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Ways to mitigate power damage:
Dodge, block, invulnerability, Protection, Aegis, Toughness

Ways to mitigate condition damage:
Dodge, block, invulnerability, Resistance, cleanse, Vitality

Time it takes to deal 10 – 20k damage with power:
Between 1 and 10 seconds

Time it takes to deal 10 – 20k damage with conditions:
Between 15 and 30 seconds

After your health has disappeared from a large critical hit from power, that’s it. Your health is gone. You can heal, if your heal is available, or it’s gone forever.

After enough conditions are applied to you that they could potentially deal a massive amount of damage (eg. having 15 stacks of Bleed transferred to you from a Necromancer), your health is still there but going down quickly. You can remove the Bleeds or apply Resistance if you have access to it negating the damage completely. Imagine if you landed a 20k Gunflame (Berserker F1 burst skill) and someone “cleansed” the damage and went back to full health. That would be pretty annoying, don’t you think?

Conditions are fine. Players are just moronic.

You’re right to talk about dodge and blocks. I didn’t mention them because I wanted to keep it only about “passive” mitigation (even if heal is not so passive…) and whatever, it works for both.

I agree aconditions are fine, and this was my conclusion. I mostly play conditions so I won’t get angry against them

The Game Slayer.7632:

I lol’d. How is it that you don’t understand that a condi class can stack mitigation + damage so much more effectively than a power class?

This is where there’s unbalance. Condi damage (and condi duration) determine how effective you are at dealing damage. Power + Precision + Ferocity are required for direct damage builds.
Now, if you want to mitigate whatever damage, you’ll need tons of vitality, and you can add toughness if you want to be more effective against direct damage.

So, you actually need less stats when you play condi damage, and this is why dire is so effective. Condi damage + Mitigation against both damages.

To me, the issue is power damage hasn’t enough access to vitality stats. Considering power builds need 3 stats for the damage part, it’d be logical they rely mostly on vitality to mitigate both kinds of damages. Yet, there aren’t many options for that…

There is marauder gear. It offeres all 3 offensive stats for a power build + vitality. There is no condi equivalent. As a condi build you can go full bunker (dire/trailblazer) or full glass hybrid (viper/sinister). There is no 4-stat-amulet that offeres both max offense + some defense for condi builds. Rabid/carrion or mixed stats will always result in lower total stats, so not optimal either. The glass variant sucks, because condi builds gain less dmg from stats than pure power builds, which leaves the tanky gear as only good option. Condi builds have it a lot worse than power builds, when it comes to gear variation and increasing vitality across the board would solve nothing. And even with the “op” dire and trailblazer gear, only a few classes are truly better going condi than power.

Fix unbalanced traits and skills for both condi and power builds – then gear wouldn’t be as much of an issue.

Trailblazer would be an equivalent as it offers your defense stats + both of the offensive stats necessary for condition damage. There is a good deal more variation in power builds mostly because there are varying levels of damage and tankiness/sustain needed for different roles. If you’re going condi, most often you’re there for damage and not a lot of support.

It is an equivalent in terms of being the best stat combination for the particular dmg type. It is not an equivalent in terms of offering the same amount of offense and defense. And because of some basic differences between power and condi dmg, it is not even possible to achieve a balance statswise. Increasing vitality or removing dire/trailblazer, as many people ask for, would not increase balance, it would just limit diversity even more. Like in PvP, where they are trying to create balance through removing stat combinations, which – surprise, surprise – didn’t work out that well.

That’s why they should balance traits, skills, runes and sigils with the existing stat combinations in mind and not the other way arround.

ThomasC.1056:

Exciton.8942:

I don’t understand where this condition meta is.
The only meta condition damage dealer is reaper and that is it.
All other profession meta are power. So your criteria is that not even one profession is allowed to play condition as an optimal build?

Even in PvP, you have about 50-50 split on condition and power. How does that make condition overpowered?

I’m not talking about PvP, as stats are given from another mechanic. I was mostly sharing thoughts about the so-called condi meta that some people here are complaining about.

I mostly play condi, and I enjoy it. Matter of taste. My wish is everyone should be able to play the fashion he likes, and enjoy it too.

We already have plenty of competitive power builds if ppl don’t like to play condition.

The only problem those players have is that they want to be able to beat condition builds by taking minimal condition removal.

But srsly, if condition builds even lose to build with very little condition removal, what is the point any more?

Power build skills damage output need to be a bit cutted on classes that dont use much power, some classes can do very good damage w/o using that much power stats, even i on NOMADS do damage with traps in wvw…. and can kill targets with cleric traper on spvp players need to use stats more to achieve damage , conditions migh be fine since they are the gw1 condition+hex pressure builds stacked in one output source, the problem might be the power damage output that is easy to spam,we have alot of cleaves (splash damage), low cooldown aoe’s, and that migh be the issue and not the condi builds.

Condi builds should exist they serverd to pressure targets that can hold the damage atack, the issue here is that power damages builds are easy to play as in easy to achieve damage that can easilly overwhelm most classes vitality/toughness, when ic a rev CoR making one druid from 90%+ health to down state, this tells me alot of how unskilled gw2 is.

Fire(can be easilly super stacked with the right builds and teamplay), confusion migh be the only 2 conditions that migh need some checkup, after some balance changes for some power skills the unblockables migh need to be reviewed as well since ivne been atacks with skills that take alot of hp while under RF effect.

ive seen alot of players wanting to rely on damage output builds that ahve very low CD, so they dont need much effort to be efficient at least, but maybe that is why gw2 was designed for, reason pvp isnt nothing special either, they cutted alot of know how stuff was needed in gw1 pvp, wich is what this game is lacking by alot.

sorry for my bad english and if text sounds confusing o.O

“Time it takes to deal 10 – 20k damage with conditions:
Between 15 and 30 seconds”

Guess you never ran into a condi engi/dh before. Cause you will cut the 15/30 down to 5-10sec.

The time it takes to deal 10-20k in condi damage is around 1-2 seconds with epidemic. Just sayin’

Reverence.6915:

The time it takes to deal 10-20k in condi damage is around 1-2 seconds with epidemic. Just sayin’

not only that but said damage will be continuos and will ignore invuln and evades while direct damage has to be landed manually over and over and has cooldowns

even as an engineer i can do 9-15k DPS worth of condi with 4 keypresses and that is without perplexity runes

What he is proposing would help. No its not a magic cure-all bullet, but it would indeed help get things back on track.

Rezzet.3614:

even as an engineer i can do 9-15k DPS worth of condi with 4 keypresses and that is without perplexity runes

15k dps on what, 5 training dummies standing still in front of you?

WvW is not PvE.

Good luck doing those 15k on a single power meta roaming warrior. In fact, good luck even doing 1k dps – chances are higher he will still outheal you.

The “condi meta” issues is dire/trailblazers having too few compromises on certain specific classes that doesnt rely on crit chance to sustain condi damage (thief and mesmers the most obvious culprits, an engineer actually require crit to be effective and will rarely run full dire). Remove them. Its that simple.

Dawdler.8521:

Rezzet.3614:

even as an engineer i can do 9-15k DPS worth of condi with 4 keypresses and that is without perplexity runes

15k dps on what, 5 training dummies standing still in front of you?

WvW is not PvE.

Good luck doing those 15k on a single power meta roaming warrior. In fact, good luck even doing 1k dps – chances are higher he will still outheal you.

The “condi meta” issues is dire/trailblazers having too few compromises on certain specific classes that doesnt rely on crit chance to sustain condi damage (thief and mesmers the most obvious culprits, an engineer actually require crit to be effective and will rarely run full dire). Remove them. Its that simple.

the point remains conditions can deal as much damage as burst skills but do so each second wich yields a superior DPS

as far as testing dummies go those were my wvw numbers without perplexity runes in wich case i managed to land 25k dps on a mesmer, necro and warr

i wouldn’t mind seeing how game changes if you gave every class just base 10k+ hp.

even if just a 1 week thing.

Rezzet.3614:

as far as testing dummies go those were my wvw numbers without perplexity runes in wich case i managed to land 25k dps on a mesmer, necro and warr

Cant say I have ever seen an engineer kill someone in less than a second. Most mesmers I fight stealth, block, reflect, the necros go into DS while turning my condis against me and the warriors… anyone worth their salt can barely be touched with nike builds that regen 10% hp a second (and also reflect for good measure).

Since most attacks on the engie are AoE, you should be able to solo a 30 man zerg with that kind of dps!

What are you fighting, level 10 guys in blue armor with no skills unlocked?

Remember how the game was about 3 months after launch?

WvW fights were so engaging. There was literally no skill spam at all.

Xillllix.3485:

Remember how the game was about 3 months after launch?

WvW fights were so engaging. There was literally no skill spam at all.

Actually, I’ve seen that again during HoT beta, when they were releasing the elite specs. There were lots of fights around spawn camps that took some time because both fighters :

1. were testing the build
2. didn’t really know what they were doing
3. didn’t run an optimized build.

In my opinion, these weren’t the less enjoyable fights

Uh, I can dish out almost 20k condition damage in three seconds on a thief when solo. Closer to 50-60k in a party.

And with power thief you can do those 20k in 1 second, right? Both signet and venom thieves are not very strong builds overall, because they sacrifice too much defense for dmg and if their oneshot-attempt fails, they don’t have much left. For both types of dmg, builds with higher sustain/survivability and sustained dmg are usually superior.

Rezzet.3614:

as far as testing dummies go those were my wvw numbers without perplexity runes in wich case i managed to land 25k dps on a mesmer, necro and warr

Don’t mix up (burst) dmg and dps. Nobody can deal 25k dps in a solo setting. Not even with max dps PvE builds and against a golem.