Guild Wars 2

So rather than put this in the PvP forums, I thought I would throw this out to the WvW community.

For the last 6 months I have been playing a condition build focused around rabid equipment on my engineer. I was at about 1.3k condition damage. In speaking with another engineer, he goes for the P/V/T set and uses grenades as a burst build.

The question here is, in WvW is power more important than condition damage? It maybe took me 8 months to come to this but I think over all that it seems more practical to go power since cleansing is available through fields. I thought a high burning/bleeding/poison might help me but overall I just don’t have enough burst to get anyone down.

When is Condition Damage useful? In sPVP it might play a better role but in wvw with so many players, I wonder about it’s viability.

Thiefz.3695:

The question here is, in WvW is power more important than condition damage?

In zerg vs zerg clashes, yes.

Beware: conditions will still be very strong. Poisoning enemy to reduce the hp they can recover can be a decisive move. Movement impairing conditions are extremely important. And any other condition that will cover those to prevent them to get cleansed too fast, or to apply additional pressure to enemy, will be useful.

But, unlike spvp/roaming, with condition dmg you will not kill stuff. There are multiple issues, but most important is that a)conditions can get cleansed extremely fast in large groups and b)the “time window” to apply conditions when the 2 zergs clashes is usually very small, thus direct dmg is better.

Again, conditions aren’t useless per se: but they will work as accessory dmg and pressure, not as main killer.

As said, in a large battle scenario.

condi is useful at small scale fighting
power is useful at large scale fighting, and vs structures/siege

which do you see more of in a day?

Having run both types of builds on an eng and a necro, high power is better in zerging and condis are better in smaller play in my opinion. Condi won’t win you alone in small groups, I agree with above that they are an accessory to power. Also in my opinion CC is more of an accessory to power in zerg fights over condis. I feel like condis are just kind of there so I can tag things when there’s 50 red tags on my screen.

Power will kill you in zerg vs zerg because of retaliation. I tried it on my engi and one barrage almost killed me.

Hule.8794:

Power will kill you in zerg vs zerg because of retaliation. I tried it on my engi and one barrage almost killed me.

thats cuz you took 40 retal ticks, not cuz youre power based. an enemys retal strength depends on their power. not yours.

In roaming, WvW has the same problem as sPvP for the most part. Conditions are quite overpowered. But most of WvW action these days are in medium to large groups and the sheer number of Guardians really cuts into the value of conditions for zergs. It’s great if your goal is simply to loot bags as you’ll tag a ton of players with them. But as an offensive tool? Not the greatest.

It’s a shame too because I’d love to play my Ranger as a power build, but they don’t have a real power option because ANet can’t figure out what they want the class to do in this game.

As for retaliation… they need to change that so it only does damage on the intial attack and not on subsequent ones. Take barrage for example… you never want to toss that into a zerg because you’re taking 350×5×10. Only the first wave should trigger retaliation.

So I roam and I run with Zergs. To use an example last night. My p/s engi with grenades was fighting a very good warrior. I would apply conditions and get him to half his HP, he would use a shout to cleanse and then heal. My dps in power was not high enough to spike him down and my conditions were not staying long enough to damage him. At the end it became a stalemate because I was unable to hold conditions while doing damage. Ultimately I required backup while he called in an ele to back him up. At that point, I was still unable to impact the ele or warrior much and the combo killed me.

So the name of the game is attrition which is what happened. I could dodge, blind, stun him but he could shrugg off most. I think also that WvW is a bit more difficult to spec for because sPVP doesn’t have all the gear that WvW has to deal with.

All in all, I need to be effective within my team and damage seems to be one thing I’m lacking.

Conditions suffer from a huge WvW problem… there is A LOT of condition removal. There used to be some conditions like Confusion which were scary good pre-nerf but not much left. Condition damage buffs also don’t scale as well as power buffs.

There is one condition that is devastating and it is the one that somehow does 1100-ish per tick, stacks, stays on while downed and doesn’t show up in the combat log (surprise surprise). I don’t see it often but by the time I realize what is on me I am dead. Still trying to figure out what it is.

insanemaniac.2456:

thats cuz you took 40 retal ticks, not cuz youre power based. an enemys retal strength depends on their power. not yours.

Yeah but with power You need to throw grenades on their heads all the time. With conditions You can throw one set of grenades, heal, and in the meantime some of those conditions are still ticking.

On my condi Ranger (I know… meh) I’m blending in more and more power to the point I’m comfortable. I do not appreciate the power creep in the game as it is. We’re really hitting each other too hard in WvW. Most of those hit’s end up being power based. But, I have found some truly devastating Condi grenade Engi’s out there.

Straegen.2938:

Conditions suffer from a huge WvW problem… there is A LOT of condition removal. There used to be some conditions like Confusion which were scary good pre-nerf but not much left. Condition damage buffs also don’t scale as well as power buffs.

There is one condition that is devastating and it is the one that somehow does 1100-ish per tick, stacks, stays on while downed and doesn’t show up in the combat log (surprise surprise). I don’t see it often but by the time I realize what is on me I am dead. Still trying to figure out what it is.

I sometimes have problems with removing burning, as in its the only condition I have and I pop Shadow Refuge (I run shadows embrace) and 7 seconds later its still burning me, Id suspect that first. Second would be torment, because Anet.

Overall I think power is better. Particularly at guild level, there is too much organized condition removal. Also (rich) warriors are getting around with -98% condition duration. But it still hurts sometimes.

sostronk.8167:

Also (rich) warriors are getting around with -98% condition duration. But it still hurts sometimes.

lol no. The -98% total only applies to chill/cripple/immobile, which don’t do any damage anyways. Not only that – Warriors are not the only class who can achieve that.

C.Damage has become more important to overcome in WvW. Lemongrass has become very popular now, even for me.

I have just started using my condition based,grenade Engineer in WvW.And he has rapidly become my most deadly character. And most fun.

He can clean walls of an enemy tower so friendlies below can get on with their job.I have killed so many this way.

I used him to cap a camp solo for the first time last night.I and another played who turned up as I had just killed them all was surprised how quickly I did it.

A group of 10-20 enemies jumped into a tower just after we capped.They bunched down on the ramp.I spammed a grenade rainstorm upon their heads,for the friendlies rushing ahead of me just had to do the finishing moves upon them.

In big battles I rocket boot to the back of them and grenade them from the middle to the rear.So when the main friendly force steam into the enemy have been softened up.

Condition damage isn’t that bad against pug zergs, but the way a lot of guilds play is run in, spike an area, run out, heal, repeat. Condition damage isn’t great with that playstyle, especially when the enemy has a front line of guards and wars removing conditions, with eles, mesmers, and necros in the back removing them too.

The point is: would you rather die as engi because of retaliation or will you just throw more grenades to apply new conditions because old ones were cleansed?
Engi can place a lot of different conditions almost instantly as aoe, its not like necro marks. It is more powerfull than epidemic because of aoe cap (epidemic→ 5 enemirs, grenades 3*5enemies).
Pure damage is good, but engi is not meant to be front line warrior. Best role for engi is in the back making pressure on enemies. Players looking on utility skills are not watching your warriors pushing in.

dank.3680:

sostronk.8167:

Also (rich) warriors are getting around with -98% condition duration. But it still hurts sometimes.

lol no. The -98% total only applies to chill/cripple/immobile, which don’t do any damage anyways. Not only that – Warriors are not the only class who can achieve that.

I’m aware. We also have access to multiple methods of independent condition stripping and group strips. Add all this up and I basically have no problem with condition damage. With Dolyak signet regenerating around 450 health per second I can usually ignore the few conditions I get. If I get too many stacks I just strip them.

Condition ignores the lone passive defensive trait of all classes, Toughness. While there are numerous ways for removal, there will be times you get caught in one and downed before you know it factoring skill lag, inevitable frames per second hit when two balls collide, particularly in T1.

Trying to kill skillful enemies with long duration conditions will not work in zerg fights, but if you can administer a high condition dmg spike with a class such as the necromancer, it will down people, especially if the condition damage is coordinated between a group of condition builds, who can isolate a small group of enemies from the main group with CC and lay all their conditions on them.

Many organized groups have high damage resistance (over 3k armor/protection), it’s next to impossible to kill them without keeping up bleeds, burning and poison on them.

If you’re talking about random zerglings then pretty much anything will kill them, even a full bunker build with zero dmg output.