Guild Wars 2

Reverence.6915:

Azrael.4960:

What needs to be fixed? So you can’t burst down a necro/engi who just condi’d you to death? Seriously, outside of pvp, conditions are already messed up. If they’re nerfed in pvp/wvw then they’d be useful nowhere

What needs to be fixed is the amount of conditions applied vs the amount of cleanse a person can have needs to be balanced. It’s draining any semblance of build variety in WvW when conditions are so strong that every class that wants to roam must take every kind of cleanse available to them so they don’t die to conditions instantly.

Basically, cleansing needs to be made stronger

Some cleansing is. Runes of Lyssa for instance converts 5 conditions to boons when you use your elite.

Necromancers have well of power that does a similar thing, plus a mark on their staff that transfers conditions,. Mesmers have Null field. Warriors have a stance or some such that makes them be able to ignore conditions temporarily. Eles have diamond skin. There’s a sigil that gives you a chance of getting rid of a condition, and another that actually transfers it, like every hit or every crit or something, minus the few second cooldown.

There are a number of classes have condition mitigation that can be very effective, as well as some runes and sigils. Conditions rely on wearing you out. I’ve seen zerker thieves and warriors take down foes in a matter of seconds.

I think its just you need to try out some of these condition mitigation tactics.

Reverence.6915:

It’s ridiculous that some classes can apply more conditions than you can cleanse

If you could cleanse as much as they could apply, conditions would be utterly worthless. What you are asking for is not reasonable. Conditions need to be as viable as direct damage, and you asking to be able to cleanse as many as are applied?

Roe.3679:

I will not get sick of condi QQ threads where someone got hit by more than one condi class at once. I wonder if they are so upset about 2 staff eles or thieves or 2 hammer warriors? What did you expect would happen?

Two hammer warriors and I turn into a ping pong ball. Lotsa fun lol

style.6173:

Don’t mess with the food.

+/- duration food allows for people to better plan strategy. This game lacks that already and removing more of it is a bad idea.

Really. The ideas behind the foods are awesome and supports build diversity. Anet says they want build diversity, despite blowing up some pretty useful rune sets.

Just remove the current +and -40% duration and split them into + and – 40% for damaging and utility conditions. This would allow for a lot more diversity in how builds can work. You either need to choose the bursty path for conditions(much like you can run full berserker gear) or you can choose the defensive path(soldiers).

Condi damage does not need a nerf, but you can at least be forced to choose a path.

Also about condi damage being unreasonable, while I’ll admit there are certain times conditions seem out of control and unavoidable, I also can’t avoid a bunch of thieves spamming me with attacks. Does that make thieves OP? No! They can be terribly annoying without being OP. The same is true for any other class.

I think the reason people feel that condis are op is that they can see their death coming. Their team stacked all of their condis on me? Well, I’m toast. But people don’t seem to complain very often(while this issue used to be huge on the forums) about being insta-bursted by power damage. This still happens but now that people are forced to take condi cleanse(no one ran it in the first year of the game), they are a problem. They’ve always been there, but now people see them as the threat they’ve always been.

TLDR Don’t nerf condis, just change duration and they are just as damaging as a well place kill shot or w/e.

Morfedel.4165:

Roe.3679:

I will not get sick of condi QQ threads where someone got hit by more than one condi class at once. I wonder if they are so upset about 2 staff eles or thieves or 2 hammer warriors? What did you expect would happen?

Two hammer warriors and I turn into a ping pong ball. Lotsa fun lol

Staff Eles rarely roam and are fodder when they do because they have to trade survival for damage. Thieves also have to trade survival for damage with one exception: the condi-evasion spec which now dominates roaming. Direct damage thieves also have to contend with blocks, dodges, invuln, toughness, blinds, etc.

Hammer warriors… block, dodge, stability, teleport, invuln, etc. Load them up with conditions, kite and watch them squirm. Cleansing Ire is great… if it lands on something which blindness renders nearly useless. Even hammer warriors usually fold up to condi warrior builds.

Two condi bunkers drop a mess on a player and it is game over for most builds. Once that condi is on, few builds can get it off fast enough. One solid necro/engi combo will melt most players in under 10s. Even if a player manages to get it off and survive they are still staring down the barrel of two heavy bunkers that will reapply that same volley in seconds.

The condition problem is several fold and given the glacial class balancing and feature development I fear will never be fixed.

1. The addition of conditions on sigils/runes and classes has given some classes access to too many conditions. The result is a condition burst where it should be attrition. I guess they thought it would aid in build variety but they do the opposite. Condition builds weren’t that great prior to torment, perplexity, etc and were actually kind of weak. Every condition build needs to have as many damaging conditions as possible in order to keep up with power damage and to keep cleanse from making them useless. In order to balance this they need to give classes access to 2-3 damaging conditions max.

1. Damaging Conditions need to be balanced. The stacking/scaling of conditions is just wrong making certain ones better in most situations. Make them all scale similarly, stack, and give them all stacking effects that reward stacking conditions on, which in turn gets us back to attrition. Of course some condition stacking would need to be rebalanced since it is incredibly easy to stack certain conditions on certain builds.

1. Cleanse is too powerful when you don’t have access to a ton of different conditions and most certainly in large group situations. Cleanse shouldn’t remove an entire stack of conditions. Cleanse should instead remove 2 stacks and scale with healing power(say every 300 healing power = 1 stack). AOE skills should obviously remove less,

1. Stat balancing. The entire stat system hasn’t exactly been great since launch. With power scaling with 3 stats and conditions only 2. The -condition duration food/runes need to be removed as it certainly isn’t fair if you can mitigate 40% of their damage where you can’t do the same with power builds. unless of course they add -40% power, -40% crit, or -40% ferocity food/runes as well. I also think that condition and power damage should scale more based on your actual condition damage/power. Power builds should not get as much from damaging conditions and condition builds should not get as much from direct damage attacks.

I’m sure there are things that I’m missing but that’s the bulk of it. Condition builds need to get back to attrition. No conditions shouldn’t be 100% mitigatable like some on these forums think, power and conditions need to be equally balanced. Currently neither are balanced with outliers on each side. You have some classes/builds that have ridiculous power builds and on the other side you have some classes/builds that can apply almost every condition in a few seconds. I am all about unique class builds instead of the homogenized system we have now, but the uniqueness should come from the skills themselves and not at the cost of balance.

Nick.6972:

Why I quit playing Healway Guard:
Even though I have 3.3K armor, nearly 1.3k Healing, running shouts with Pure Of Voice and have Absolute Resolution trait on, I still can’t deal with all the insane condition spaming.
You cleanse 3, 4 new are applied. And you can’t effectively outheal the condition damage.

You don’t outheal the conditions, any more than you outheal direct damage. You survive long enough to kill the opponent.

Morfedel.4165:

You don’t outheal the conditions, any more than you outheal direct damage. You survive long enough to kill the opponent.

Which furthers the point that no class should have heavy survival and heavy damage. Direct damage has numerous trade offs hence the glassy/heavy hitter or bunker/wiffle bat choices. Conditioning builds have virtually no offset for survival. The entire concept of play:

Shake (apply conditions) and Bake (wait for said conditions to kill target)

Straegen.2938:

Morfedel.4165:

You don’t outheal the conditions, any more than you outheal direct damage. You survive long enough to kill the opponent.

Which furthers the point that no class should have heavy survival and heavy damage. Direct damage has numerous trade offs hence the glassy/heavy hitter or bunker/wiffle bat choices. Conditioning builds have virtually no offset for survival. The entire concept of play:

Shake (apply conditions) and Bake (wait for said conditions to kill target)

-Cond duration and cleansing turn the oven down or off altogether.

Conds are already not a viable damage source in large groups due to cleansing. Now people want it also to be not viable for smaller groups when it’s not even that strong there in an organized well put together group?

If you’re upset about 1v1 or 2v2 balance though… that’s another story altogether (different builds/classes counter each other far too hard).

The problem is not conditions but the WvW power creep. Once you get close or above 2k condition damage killing someone takes absolutely no effort or skill. If you factor in broken rune sets like Perplexity and awkward gear choices like Dire you are in for a fun ride.

If you somehow want to balance WvW, you need to put an end to the buff stacking madness: remove food or change food in a way that it completes your build not adds more offensive/defensive power, remove/change Applied Strength and Applied Fortitude (honestly not even PvE has such powerful buffs), remove/change Bloodlust, fix obviously broken rune sets like Perplexity, remove ascended gear, remove obviously overpowered gear choices like Dire. Only then will you start getting somewhere.

Have a look at higher tier PvP. Pure condition damage builds are marginal for a reason. You have none of the broken gear choices or buffs you can have in WvW.

Straegen.2938:

Morfedel.4165:

Roe.3679:

I will not get sick of condi QQ threads where someone got hit by more than one condi class at once. I wonder if they are so upset about 2 staff eles or thieves or 2 hammer warriors? What did you expect would happen?

Two hammer warriors and I turn into a ping pong ball. Lotsa fun lol

Staff Eles rarely roam and are fodder when they do because they have to trade survival for damage. Thieves also have to trade survival for damage with one exception: the condi-evasion spec which now dominates roaming. Direct damage thieves also have to contend with blocks, dodges, invuln, toughness, blinds, etc.

Hammer warriors… block, dodge, stability, teleport, invuln, etc. Load them up with conditions, kite and watch them squirm. Cleansing Ire is great… if it lands on something which blindness renders nearly useless. Even hammer warriors usually fold up to condi warrior builds.

Two condi bunkers drop a mess on a player and it is game over for most builds. Once that condi is on, few builds can get it off fast enough. One solid necro/engi combo will melt most players in under 10s. Even if a player manages to get it off and survive they are still staring down the barrel of two heavy bunkers that will reapply that same volley in seconds.

2 players whatever spec > 1 player. You’re knocking condis because condi players group up together? You feel that you should win against 2 solid players because you don’t like fighting them?

Elmo Benchwarmer.3025:

The problem is not conditions but the WvW power creep. Once you get close or above 2k condition damage killing someone takes absolutely no effort or skill. If you factor in broken rune sets like Perplexity and awkward gear choices like Dire you are in for a fun ride.

If you somehow want to balance WvW, you need to put an end to the buff stacking madness: remove food or change food in a way that it completes your build not adds more offensive/defensive power, remove/change Applied Strength and Applied Fortitude (honestly not even PvE has such powerful buffs), remove/change Bloodlust, fix obviously broken rune sets like Perplexity, remove ascended gear, remove obviously overpowered gear choices like Dire. Only then will you start getting somewhere.

Have a look at higher tier PvP. Pure condition damage builds are marginal for a reason. You have none of the broken gear choices or buffs you can have in WvW.

And then condi builds are effective nowhere in the game despite no proof other than QQ that they are overpowered.

I am quite shocked, that even after I took the time, calculated and broke down for you guys on an example the benefit of all 3 stats – condition dmg, condition duration and precision – you still are claiming false statements. As I have pointed out: the benefit of precision may seem weak compared with condition duration, the combined bonus of all 3 stats however gives a 10% bigger dmg increase than condition duration alone. In that form, the precision increase is actually weakest for necromancers (condition dmg and the ‘bleed on crit’ trait are in the same trait line), it becomes insanely stronger for engineer (Burn on crit + bleed on crit) or Mesmer, who hugely gain additional condition damage with precision and cause a huge amount of bleed stacks with weapons, that don’t cause bleeds on themselves.

Looking at those mechanics and the number break down, it would be impossible to ignore that to maximize condition damage 3 stats are needed already. Anything further would be just simply unfair.

I can’t hear the word ‘condi bunker’ any more, suggesting that condition builds need lesser amount of stats in order to dish out huge damage numbers, while maintaining bunker defenses. That is simply not the case (as explained above). Any condition damage build, I am aware of, that has huge damage output, has around 2.5k -2.6k defense (what can not be called bunker) and may even lack some important defensive mechanisms like stun breakers, or even condition cleanses. The 3k defense and 25k HP builds are weak in damage output and have to fight the real attrition, often not being able to out dps some build’s cleanses and heals.

If a balance is to be found, maybe instead of nerfing condition damage we can buff condition-clearing abilities? For example, after clearing a condition, that same condition cannot be applied to you for 3 seconds or more (balance to be found in the duration), similar to the ‘revealed’ state stealthed players get when they attack. That way, condition damage still work in that they deal the same amount of damage as before and condition-clearing abilities are not made useless by being quickly overpowered by new conditions every time a condition is cleared.

That would give you a window of opportunity to change from a defensive playing style to an offensive one, similar to how others can take advantage of revealed thieves to quickly deal damage to them.

A few things to consider here: Condition damage is meant to be stronger than direct damage. If it were equally strong as direct damage, why would we need condition-clearing abilities?

Condition-clearing abilities are meant to provide the user with some sort of protection–if conditions can be applied immediately after they are cleared, what is the point of having condition-clearing abilities? And where does the protection they were meant to provide come from?

displacedTitan.6897:

Only class I really feel bad for in WvW is Ranger… those dudes get no love at all.

Maybe that would actually be the solution bring every classes dmg output/sustain down on ranger level
that would instantly end all few second fights
coming from burst condi or power dmg classes

Maja.6372:

displacedTitan.6897:

Only class I really feel bad for in WvW is Ranger… those dudes get no love at all.

Maybe that would actually be the solution bring every classes dmg output/sustain down on ranger level …

But not the turning, please, I beg of you, do not make us keyboard-turn.

From what I understand condition damage bypass the toughness stat.

If weakness could do the same for berserker build (example: elementalist air 5 trait): Instead of adding a small % increase to damage it could make attacks pierce through the armor rating.

It could balance things or at the very least create a new counter-meta.

Imo nothing drastic needs to be done, just small changes and see where the meta settles after it.

First step is bringing down the +/- condi duration foods to a respectable amount, 40% is just ridiculous, when you consider other foods give at most +20% to a single condition it seems like a serious oversight.

The food should be brought down to +10%/-10% imo.

Condition damage bypasses toughness. Its direct counter in this manner is increasing HP. A single bleed stack of 100 damage does significantly higher % of damage to a health pool of an ele than it would of a warrior with the same vitality.

TyPin.9860:

I am quite shocked, that even after I took the time, calculated and broke down for you guys on an example the benefit of all 3 stats – condition dmg, condition duration and precision – you still are claiming false statements.

The main message I took away from your spreadsheet is that if you want to double your condition damage you just need to swap in some optimal runes and traits (for necros it’s more than double, you ignored food despite the fact that the Lingering Curses trait can actually push condition duration over 100%), and you still get to keep vitality and toughness as secondary stats on your gear.

First, on food: both +40% and -40% should be nerfed down to 10%. They currently simply remove 99% of choice. If you use conditions to do damage, you are stupid to use anything but +duration, if only to not get screwed by anyone using -duration. Anyone else is stupid to use anything but -duration, if only to not get screwed by anyone using +duration. Things like melandru runes and dogged march also wouldn’t be anywhere near as powerful if there wasn’t the absurd food for them to stack with. Taking something from 100 to 75 is a much smaller % decrease than taking it from 60 to 35.

As for conditions in general, I think certain classes need to be changed to require more than just stack condition damage and when it comes to consider duration, just think “OP food has it covered!” to get high condition dps. A pitifully weak trait or two and on-crit sigils are nowhere near enough to overcome the defensive advantages dire/apothecary gear gives. P/D dire thieves are just the most grievous offenders. Necro’s, warriors, and rangers have a small bleed on crit. Engineers’ incendiary powder “nerf” actually make crit far less important when they increased the cooldown. You don’t get much of any benefit on crit after say 20-25% when you only need 1 crit every 10 seconds for 6-7 seconds of burning. Mesmers are probably the only class that suffer significantly if they don’t invest in precision due to the bleeds from sharper images having no cooldown and being a large chunk of their condi application capability.

The problem with low/no cooldown, on-crit condi procs is they remove a lot of the desired counter-ability of well timed cleanses and turn it into constant spam. So atm it might be too big of an undertaking to redesign/rebalance condition gear requirements. Probably the best solution would be to have never implemented dire gear in the first place (and please don’t ever bring it to spvp), but too late for that eh?

Didn’t read all the comments, but from what I did read there’s just one big thing missing. Boon stacking will always be the reason why condi builds are useless in anything bigger than 5v5. The three stat position is pretty weak when you consider the access to AOE boons these classes have. Just look around when you’re in W3 you’ll see easily 60-70% of players are running Warriors or Guardians. Warriors don’t HAVE to have a massive crit chance with 50% fury uptime. Guardians don’t even need that much power if you have 2 of them together and they can get 24 stack of might on a15 sec. cooldown (and a decent AOE heal). Unless there’s poison involved both can out regen most bleed stacking. With protection a condi build is doing like zero direct damage. Aegis blocks condi application along with direct damage, or how bout vigor and just dodge spam out of the all that condi spamming. Stability negates fears and other soft CC.
That’s not even mentioning clear condis on shout, purging flames, etc . etc. You can trait into lower shout cooldowns for moar boons more often. Boon stacking and AOE condi clear is the reason why Condis outside of very small scale fights are just not on par with power builds, and I’d argue aren’t really even that better in smallish fights just depends on your class. Certain classes will struggle with condis (mesmers, and eles), other will just laugh them off no matter how they build (necro is the best example).
Most medium and large groups (10+) don’t even run -condi food they just bring another guardian.
If you nerfed AOE boon application it would change the whole meta overnight. Or if they somehow made boon ripping a viable strategy. Most people just don’t get it cause it takes an organized group build comp to synergize it. All people are looking at is damage numbers. Nerf crit. damage it’kittenting too hard. Well what boons did they have? Nerf condi damage, ever consider how much might that condi caster had when he melted you in 10sec.? Or that they had fury so they were proccing sigils, and traits like crazy. Any good group is gonna be considering how to get 100% stability uptime, not how can we get an epic kitten ton of condi damage on this zerg. The reason is Boons not conditions are what kills people and allows you to survive group fights.

Xillllix.3485:

From what I understand condition damage bypass the toughness stat.

If weakness could do the same for berserker build (example: elementalist air 5 trait): Instead of adding a small % increase to damage it could make attacks pierce through the armor rating.

It could balance things or at the very least create a new counter-meta.

No, it would break Vulnerability (I think you meant that, not Weakness) wide open.

Let’s say you got lucky in PvP and had your 500 damage hit pierce the armor rating against a Necro with no investment into Toughness (so 1804 armor). Now, normally, that’s a pathetically tiny hit that the necro wouldn’t really even register. However, if it ignored the target’s armor, that mere 500 damage would explode into a 902,000 damage hit. Literally no spec in the game could survive that and even most PvE bosses would be nearly one-shotted.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to say thank you for being so constructive in this thread guys. We’re watching threads like this one, and we really find peaceful debates to be highly useful for us when gathering balance perception data.

We know food is an issue that definitely gets people passionate, so thank you for staying calm while voicing your opinions! I can’t make any promises on fixes, but I can say we’re debating this issue internally just like you guys are, and we use your points/counterpoints as reference in our discussions.

Thanks for being awesome!

Please do not remove food entirely from wvw. Just balance it.

A little off topic but I feel like -condi food/duration also has had a negative effect on group vs group fights as well. It seems like it is becoming increasing prevalent that guilds are moving away for soldiers/troopers runes and relying on melandru runes/lemongrass/purging flames/dogged march to take care of conditions.

1) Stability uptime between guardians and warriors is very high so hard CCs are already very ineffective. With -98% condition duration condition CCs are nearly immune as well. This lowers some of the already very low individual skill required with well placed and timed CCs. CC becomes pointless when every stun/line/ring is run through with impunity and immobilizes fall off without the player having to even press a button.

2) Having to use cleanses at an appropriate time for you and your party was at least a somewhat engaging part of gameplay. Just having conditions melt off instantly further lowers that individual skill required.

Bertrand.3057:

TyPin.9860:

I am quite shocked, that even after I took the time, calculated and broke down for you guys on an example the benefit of all 3 stats – condition dmg, condition duration and precision – you still are claiming false statements.

The main message I took away from your spreadsheet is that if you want to double your condition damage you just need to swap in some optimal runes and traits (for necros it’s more than double, you ignored food despite the fact that the Lingering Curses trait can actually push condition duration over 100%), and you still get to keep vitality and toughness as secondary stats on your gear.

But, regarding my table and ignoring the precision factor, swapping out those runes and traits causes you to go from 3k defense to 2.5k defense (it was all exotic gear). That would allow you to almost double the damage, that is correct. However, that boost only applies to scepter and, as far as my knowledge goes, necromancers have the most condition duration boost traits. If I find the time, I will create a more structured table, with different professions, to illustrate the effects of all 3 offensive stats for condition builds.

I think that if toughness worked against conditions and there was a condition limit (say around 5 conditions) conditions would be a lot more balanced.

Getting rid of immobilize stacking would be a good start.

Confusion would be more balanced if it got removed once it caused damage.

Weakness + blind should be removed entirely imo.

Silent Shino.7239:

I think that if toughness worked against conditions and there was a condition limit (say around 5 conditions) conditions would be a lot more balanced.

Getting rid of immobilize stacking would be a good start.

Confusion would be more balanced if it got removed once it caused damage.

Weakness + blind should be removed entirely imo.

If toughness worked against conditions when what would counter toughness? If anything, toughness might need a treatment similar to what happened to crit damage.

Try playing a condi necro then come back and complain about conditions.

Condi is the new meta, and honestly I feel like it takes no skill to play a condi build, I even tried it myself. Every time I fight a necro its like they have 3 sets of hp and just run around dropping condis and slowly waiting for you to die or a thief who just stabs condis on you and disappears then repeats it until you’re dead or an engi who constantly knocks you down or stuns you while bombarding you with condis and heals back to full health whenever he/she feels like and that is a load of bs…

LimitBreaker.4165:

Condi is the new meta, and honestly I feel like it takes no skill to play a condi build, I even tried it myself. Every time I fight a necro its like they have 3 sets of hp and just run around dropping condis and slowly waiting for you to die or a thief who just stabs condis on you and disappears then repeats it until you’re dead or an engi who constantly knocks you down or stuns you while bombarding you with condis and heals back to full health whenever he/she feels like and that is a load of bs…

Have you tried just killing them? Or perhaps running away? The necro and engie, at least, can’t catch you if you run.

Morfedel.4165:

Nick.6972:

Why I quit playing Healway Guard:
Even though I have 3.3K armor, nearly 1.3k Healing, running shouts with Pure Of Voice and have Absolute Resolution trait on, I still can’t deal with all the insane condition spaming.
You cleanse 3, 4 new are applied. And you can’t effectively outheal the condition damage.

You don’t outheal the conditions, any more than you outheal direct damage. You survive long enough to kill the opponent.

How do you survive long enough and deal enough damage playing a Cleric Guard against Necro Condition Spammer/Bunker?
Build has like 15% Crit Chance and 170 Ferocity, ~2200 Power with all the buffs.
Conditions are applied so frequently it doesn’t matter whether you remove them or not.
Granted I’m far from being “mlg 1337” in 1v1, but, hey, I’m willing to learn if you have any tips.

Reverence.6915:

It’s ridiculous that some classes can apply more conditions than you can cleanse, basically killing you in less than 5 seconds.

It’s ridiculous that some classes can apply more direct damage than you can heal, basically killing you in less than 5 seconds.

How is one fair but not the other?

Seriously… I wouldn’t mind to see more diversity when roaming, but your argument falls short as long as condition builds are marginalized in the rest of the game. I think condi builds got the short end of the stick, not the power builds.

Instead of expecting every build to shine everywhere, I’m trying to adapt and I’m running several builds.

You are right though. We’ve just seen a power review (ferocity) and we could do with a condition review. I would love to see more condition prefixes (power and precision are sub-optimal to many builds, leaving Dire as the only option), and I would love to see PvE doing a better job teaching players about conditions (I can imagine the shock for some players when going from dungeons to roaming).

Edit: Spelling

Redball.7236:

The food should be brought down to +10%/-10% imo.

There is no sense in – % duration food after you nerf the + 40% to +10%.

I am finally getting the hang of a condi necro and liking it. If they nerf condi’s I will have to switch to a power zerker class like everyone else /boring.

No….imo condi builds only represent half of the most effective roamers.

Heres why: Lemon Grass, Melandru runes, Hoelbrak Runes, cleansing ire, cleansing water, zerker stance,

PU mesmer and condi theif are nearly impossible for any one player to kill. This would be a problem if it wasn’t also true for a good hambow or axe warrior or a good d/d ele.

Gully.7358:

The reason condi is rewarding right now is because you just need 1 offensive stat to do almost the same type of damage to a power style build that requires 3 stats to work.

I made the suggestion to Roy the other day about splitting condi up too where you need stats like ferocity and precision to get a more even battlefield. And lowering the base damage on condi.

Now Roy said to me that condi in larger group setups don’t match up that well but I think with the 3 stat setup it’ll be a bit more rewarding in larger group setups too. Since you can apply more pressure with a crit and a crit chance approach.

I would be ok with this IF:

• Condis could crit, just like normal attacks.
• Every player got their own condi stack on enemies. By this, I mean instead of all players adding to the same bleed stack, which caps at 25…each player would get their own condi stack. So if 4 players attack a target, each can stack up to 25 bleeds, for a total of 100 stacks on the target.

The reason direct-damage attacks take 3 stats instead of 1 is because they do more damage, they are instant, they can’t be ‘cleansed’, and there is no stacking limit. Imagine if you could only be attacked by 3 people at once, and everyone else that tried to attack you did 0 damage. That’s basically the equivalent of the condi stacking limit…

Condi definitely need a reblance, only one stat that increases its dmg, where as power builds have 3(power, precision, and ferocity). Power builds dmg can also be reduced by the amount of toughness the other player has, where with condi builds it does the same amount of dmg no matter what the other players toughness is at. Some condi builds are able to apply crazy amounts of condis that in no way can be cleasned and if it is it will be applied again in a few seconds. Condis need a rebalance where to make it so that it actually takes skill to apply and burst someone down rather than spaming a ton of skills apply all the condis you can then run in circles waiting for the condis to do the work not you.

Xillllix.3485:

From what I understand condition damage bypass the toughness stat.

If weakness could do the same for berserker build (example: elementalist air 5 trait): Instead of adding a small % increase to damage it could make attacks pierce through the armor rating.

It could balance things or at the very least create a new counter-meta.

Holy crap. No. If there was some way to make direct damage bypass armor, I would be killing everything in one hit. I can already drop a light armor with a single Eviscerate. This is not the solution.

i think that in the end, the reason there is a perceived imbalance is the stat combos that are available/used, and the strengths and limitations of certain classes.

condi builds have the option to really tank up and still kill people quite easily by kiting while the conditions do their job. power builds have to sacrifice either damage or toughness/vitality as someone mentioned above; you either go glass cannon or be a tank that tickles people to death (your tickling will probably get outhealed anyway).

when you couple this with classes that have lots of damage mitigation that work well in a pvp situation, it makes certain builds seem imbalanced. for example, mesmers can just clone/phantasm/stealth/teleport away and kite till the opponent is dead. thieves can run forever and ever, in or out of stealth, and take their time being annoying while their condis work. necros have aoe condis and have a very high hp pool, which makes melee classes suffer against them.

me playing a bursty solo roaming sw/f + gs guardian (who in their right mind would do that? melee with 13k hp without buffs ftw) is fun but also really frustrating. other glass cannons have absolutely no chance because i just block/blind all their damage and burst them back, but the moment i see a good mesmer or necro, i need to run because i know i’ll very likely lose. and a condi build is not an option for guards, so i’m shoehorned into either zerging or being a power-based roamer.

pierwola.9602:

There is no sense in – % duration food after you nerf the + 40% to +10%.

No, it would be similar in potency to the 3-5% offense you get from 80-100 power or 3-5% damage reduction from 80-100 toughness whatever. Though I could see things like mango pies or omnomberry pies being the new go-to food.

No sense is what we have currently: just look at all the -15% or -20% to a single specific condition foods, when blanket -duration to all conditions exists with over double the potency.

jpersson.7368:

It’s ridiculous that some classes can apply more direct damage than you can heal, basically killing you in less than 5 seconds.

How is one fair but not the other?

First, direct damage requires three stats to get that damage meaning they have traded off a considerable amount of survival to out damage another player unlike condi damage with requires only two.

Second, direct damage routes through toughness and armor making it very difficult to burst hardened opponents quickly. Some condi builds can burst down players much faster than DD.

Third, once on condition damage will continually damage despite invulns, blocks, dodges, etc. The only thing that can mitigate an applied condition is a cleanse or heal.

Forth, cleanses are generally on long cool downs compared to application in small group fights.

Fifth, pretty much everyone is now running Lemongrass or Koi cakes with a few exceptions. Something is very wrong when the vast majority of players are running the same food types.

Sixth, equally matched skill in a condi bunker build verus direct damage build the condi will win almost every time.

Seventh, pretty much every roaming build is now a condi build. Experienced players don’t even pretend direct damage is optimal any longer.

Eighth, a significant amount of condi application is ranged. The best direct damage builds require a player to get into another players face. This makes kiting overly powerful in small scale fights.

Nobody with any significant credibility and experience roaming or dueling in WvW believes condi damage in small scale fights is balanced. The inverse is somewhat true in large scale fights but one wrong doesn’t make the other right.

Good thing is that small scale doesn’t matter at all.

every class should be able to defeat every class… that is called balance

if you nerf conditions then how does one kill a warrior?

You don’t, you watch them run away like every warrior ever.

iHungeri.4096:

me playing a bursty solo roaming sw/f + gs guardian (who in their right mind would do that? melee with 13k hp without buffs ftw) is fun but also really frustrating. other glass cannons have absolutely no chance because i just block/blind all their damage and burst them back, but the moment i see a good mesmer or necro, i need to run because i know i’ll very likely lose. and a condi build is not an option for guards, so i’m shoehorned into either zerging or being a power-based roamer.

You could perhaps trade some of your awesome burst power for condition counter.
Have you at any time considered that your kind of invincible power burst guardian might be a part of the reason of why roaming has shifted towards condition bunkers? Do you think the players you stomped so easily should have kept playing power based burst builds so they could keep on breaking their teeth on your blind&block guardian? Do you think it is reasonable to expect them to not adapt their builds so that you could have kept playing yours with the same success rate?

Nymph of Meliai.6739:

every class should be able to defeat every class… that is called balance

if you nerf conditions then how does one kill a warrior?

Is that a serious question? if it is…then lol l2p

It’s not just condi damage!

It’s one shots.

It’s two shots.

It’s locking a player to the ground so they have NO way to use a single skill – then dead.

It’s our downed skills not working.

It’s our pets NOT working.

It’s our minions being nerfed to the ground.

So, what it really comes down to is very simple – there is no way that any character has “enough” life to live in WvW beyond 1v3 – 1v4 for VERY heavy classes or thieves.

Give us a LOT more
life in WvW compared to other areas – then it will be a FIGHT and not a “gee, that was nice being a bag for the enemy 15 times in less than 5 minutes.”

Not fun except for the zerg that walks all over the smaller server or “timezone” that has no coverage at all.

Undertow.2389:

No, it would be similar in potency to the 3-5% offense you get from 80-100 power or 3-5% damage reduction from 80-100 toughness whatever. Though I could see things like mango pies or omnomberry pies being the new go-to food.

Do you count cleans skills ? I dont think so.
- % condi duration food is way more overpowered than + % food.