Guild Wars 2

I was thinking about making conditions a bit more viable in large scale fights and I came up with the following:

Disease
any profession can choose a grandmaster trait in the respective condition damage trait line, that replaces poison with disease.
It has the following properties

• duration equal to the replaced poison
• damage equal to bleeding
• reduces healing by 4% (maybe even lower?)
• stacks in intensity
• spreads every [insert sensible number here] seconds to allies in melee range (only on stack each time)
• spreads to allies in melee range when it ends (only one stack)
• spreads to allies in melee range when it is cleansed (only one stack)

What I hope it would do
It is a condition, that becomes more and more dangerous, the longer it is around (the principle of condition damage). In the beginning, it is easy to deal with. The damage and healing reduction is fairly low. However, if the group doesn’t do something about it, it will soon stack up to 25, dealing considerable damage and reducing healing by 100%. The players effected should also have a specific green glowing or something, so you know from who you should stay away.

Cleansing on the other hand might reduce it’s effects, but it will spread the condition around. Also condition duration reduction, while saving one player from it shortly, will cause it to spread. A group can only get rid of it, when they scatter around and thus preventing the condition from spreading further.

I think the principal can bring a whole new dynamic to WvW while not being overpowered. Maybe the numbers need tweaking and the way to gain access to the condition should be different. However, while disease wouldn’t be really helpful in small scale combat, it could largely effect how big groups fight.

What do you guys think?

EDIT:
It would suddenly make Thief with shortbow viable, because they could quickly spread disease around. Uh… the thought makes me tickle

Do we really need another “condition that is not a condition”? If it’s a condition then Elementalist staff 5 in water = what, exactly? If water field covers everyone in the group, does it go away? Three water fields in succession? If one person stands outside of the group and everyone else gets cleansed is that person insta-killed by 25 stacks of this “not bleed bleed”? What’s the “normal” counter to this?

We already have Epidemic on Necros, which is basically this but with more sane “spreading” vector — anyone within melee range gets the condi stacks.

Though I suppose a Thief with that shortbow won’t laugh long when a few Necros will transfer about 10 stacks back to him Plus a bit of blind so hiding in shadows won’t clean it immediately. Just to be sure

No zombie skills please. IIRC that was done in another mmo and the result was really bad. ‘Corrupted blood incident’

Chaba.5410:

No zombie skills please. IIRC that was done in another mmo and the result was really bad. ‘Corrupted blood incident’

Yeah, except the results were not what were intended. It was a fantastic look into how an epidemic would spread throughout the populace, though.

This is the worst idea anyone has ever had. Congratulations.

The control on this would be making it spread to allies as well opponents, like it was in GW1. At that point things become REALLY interesting and it becomes a case of who has better removal setup. I’m pretty sure it was never implemented in GW2 because of the likely group size on any given map. 1 stack->5->25->125. Thats potentially the entire blob fight diseased in 3 seconds. Now if this is implemented, chances are both sides will be using it in a fight. The winners are now stuck with a self-replicating condition that, unless every single person in the surviving group uses condi removal at the exact same second, will just replicate out to everyone. The entire group would have to spread out so that they’re far enough away from each other that it can’t spread. Thats just ridiculous levels of removal needed.

I applaud the thought though. I loved disease in GW1.

EDIT: LOL imagine the one random uplevel pug that comes running back to the zerg after everyone else is cured….

Can you imagine the load on the servers having to calculate the damage to each player over time? In small numbers it would probably be manageable but upscale it to >100 player blob fights and the lag would be unimaginable. It’s pretty annoying already and is in my top 5 reasons why I hardly play wvw anymore.

Chaba.5410:

No zombie skills please. IIRC that was done in another mmo and the result was really bad. ‘Corrupted blood incident’

Heard about this years ago (of all places on the News O-O ). Still makes me giggle

KcB.6890:

This is the worst idea anyone has ever had. Congratulations.

And you are the spirit of that forum… lol…

@Bugabuga.9721
The idea would be that even if it is cleansed from 5 players at once, it would still spread in the moment of the cleanse to allies around you. It would be only possible to completely get rid of it, if no1 is around you.

If 5 ppl get it cleansed and one is not effected by the cleanse but still in melee range of all 5 players, then yes, he would get 5 stacks. It forces the zerg to split up and a melee range spread is indeed very close, so don’t even need to run miles away.

From my point of view this condition is a very clear working condition. If it is technical possible I can not say. But I think it would allow for Condition professions to be more viable in bigger fights. And bring a new dynamic to WvW.

@SFShinigami.2015
Hehe, I thought about that. But in GW1 you also had defensive skills for disease. It was completely integrated in the game. Although I also I would like to something like that in GW2^^ And yes, I was also imagining that pug

Azrael.4960
Well, how much is it compared to calculate bleeding stacks on your zerg these days? Such calculations are already happening, but the conditions get cleansed right away in most of the cases. Those kind of technical limitations shouldn’t be an argument imho.

AoE disease was great in DAoC.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

That is my vote.

TyPin.9860:

KcB.6890:

This is the worst idea anyone has ever had. Congratulations.

And you are the spirit of that forum… lol…

@Bugabuga.9721
The idea would be that even if it is cleansed from 5 players at once, it would still spread in the moment of the cleanse to allies around you. It would be only possible to completely get rid of it, if no1 is around you.

If 5 ppl get it cleansed and one is not effected by the cleanse but still in melee range of all 5 players, then yes, he would get 5 stacks. It forces the zerg to split up and a melee range spread is indeed very close, so don’t even need to run miles away.

From my point of view this condition is a very clear working condition. If it is technical possible I can not say. But I think it would allow for Condition professions to be more viable in bigger fights. And bring a new dynamic to WvW.

@SFShinigami.2015
Hehe, I thought about that. But in GW1 you also had defensive skills for disease. It was completely integrated in the game. Although I also I would like to something like that in GW2^^ And yes, I was also imagining that pug

If we get “defensive” skill then it probably won’t matter much (aside from syphoning off skillpoints for a bit like that otherwise useless “water fart” skill for toxic stuff). The reason why I ask about 5 people is that in most cases (except for siege) number of targets is always limited. If 5 people get cleared with one water blast then it’s not going to impact organized blobs much as people blast water fields at the same time, restoring health and cleansing conditions. “Contagion” aspect makes it also quite unmanageable from server’s point of view unless severely limited. Plus it would encourage most people to clump up to perform immediate clearing as water fields are most efficient for this.

If primary purpose is scatter a group, then do it the same way as in Fractals where everyone gets a “charge” that damages them when they are near other people with a charge. Again, cleansing would be efficient. But once the blob starts attacking it usually changes formation anyway (splits into little blobs/circles etc)

No more condis please

Nuzt.7894:

AoE disease was great in DAoC.

I remember my eldie casting it. But daoc had dedicated healers.

Fuzzion.2504:

I remember my eldie casting it. But daoc had dedicated healers.

DAoC just rocked for it’s time, still cant believe how good it was even looking back over some of the old fraps. Sure the graphics are crap but the team play was amazing and this is where it truly shined imo.

You’ve come up with everything but a counter, Unless your counter is to get everyone to spread out?

@Banzie.5248:
Exactly that should be the counter… you can either constantly cleanse conditions to keep the stacks low… but then they will get high again… or you spread out