Guild Wars 2

As you might know Dire/Trailblazer stats are pretty broken right now in WvW. There are other stats aswell, but if you make a tankier build for example, you have to trade off offensive stats. You might outsustain a 1v1, but you can’t kill anything in return(maybe after 5+ minutes).

That’s simply not the case when you use dire/TB stats. Condi runes and food also profit from the free defensive stats.

Just look at the stats of this Mesmer setup( don’t mind the build, it’s an abomination)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAW7flsnhy0YjawDNwtGLAHkZCCdAQT9Fb95I+QpB-TlRIQBVUJIiU/RN6GAwTAQM7PUQlfkC4uxWA-w

As a Power Mesmer this would be a wet dream running around with 3k armor and 25k life while doing loads of damage. How can these stats still exist after 4 years?

My point would be that Toughness should be traded against Precision. Now we have the vitality equivalent to Rabid gear.

Will condi gear still be good? Yes it will, but not that broken since you have at least sacrifice some defenses.

Come on Anet. If you really want to improve WvW you have to do some gear balancing. This has been requested for years. This does not even need much development effort, since you did the same thing with Magic Find gear back in 2013.

Inb4 the condicrew panicking in this topic.

Condi has been regarded as too forgiving since launch. Literally. Problem being that you can do sufficient (or in the current meta, stoopid) damage while remaining nigh unkillable. If you really want to balance this, just making it so that you would need precision to do good damage is not enough. Make it on par with Power damage; if you build max glass, you can melt things in seconds. But then you need condi damage, precision and ferocity. Condi’s should be able to crit, and the ferocity would decide how much they would crit. You would obviously need to balance it so that Power builds wouldn’t start to do crazy condi crits, but that’s easily done by deciding base damage through the condi damage stat.
People might complain that one needs a fourth stat, condition duration. But, you don’t. Adjust all base durations so that you can either burst or apply continuous pressure with a condi skill. Right now, bursty condi’s get to do both thanks to excessive duration. And that’s not even talking about the bonus benefit that you apply to conditions like weakness and cripple, etc. Those conditions are arguably just as important on power builds.

But no, the discussion will boil down to people saying Soldier’s does more damage then Dire. Anet does not have enough faith in their playerbase to make real adjustments and remove player carry mechanics once and for all.

Cygnus.6903:

Inb4 the condicrew panicking in this topic.

Condi has been regarded as too forgiving since launch. Literally. Problem being that you can do sufficient (or in the current meta, stoopid) damage while remaining nigh unkillable. If you really want to balance this, just making it so that you would need precision to do good damage is not enough. Make it on par with Power damage; if you build max glass, you can melt things in seconds. But then you need condi damage, precision and ferocity. Condi’s should be able to crit, and the ferocity would decide how much they would crit. You would obviously need to balance it so that Power builds wouldn’t start to do crazy condi crits, but that’s easily done by deciding base damage through the condi damage stat.
People might complain that one needs a fourth stat, condition duration. But, you don’t. Adjust all base durations so that you can either burst or apply continuous pressure with a condi skill. Right now, bursty condi’s get to do both thanks to excessive duration. And that’s not even talking about the bonus benefit that you apply to conditions like weakness and cripple, etc. Those conditions are arguably just as important on power builds.

But no, the discussion will boil down to people saying Soldier’s does more damage then Dire. Anet does not have enough faith in their playerbase to make real adjustments and remove player carry mechanics once and for all.

Yeah they could also revamp condis in general, but I don’t think this happens anytime soon. Adding secondary stats like condi-precision/ferocity would need some thought since the damage can be nullified by removal skills.

Regarding my suggestion by using Precision, they could also just convert the gear into carrion or rabid.

Just give us condi/power main stat with condi duration and vit or toughness minor stats. I’m sure we’d all switch if there was something better than trailblazer but it’s the best.

beatthedown.2651:

this would be a wet dream running around with 3k armor and 25k life while doing loads of damage.

And that’s accurately the reason why this whole thread misses the spot. There’s no use ranting against dire, or zergs or stunlocks or whatever.

The wet dream is being able to melt any opponent in a matter of seconds while having 25k+ life and 3k+ armor. Oh, sure, no prefix allow you to run such stats alongside 3000+ power and 80% crit + 250% ferocity. That’s so bad…

Because dire and TB are such a big issue : they make fights last. That’s so troublesome. That’s so tiresome. That’s so tedious to have to fight for, maybe more than 100 seconds in a game mode that implies players fighting players, dodging, blocking, using invulns (to prevent condis from being applied).

The only solution for your issue is to make players acknowledge that entering the game may involve to spend some time fighting, and that the odds of winning are related to personal skill, and not only to build. Which means if you want to deal direct damage “from time to time”, opposite to the relative continous damage conditions apply, then you’ll have to sustain long enough between each blow.

So, maybe condi application has become a bit too easy, and I’m clearly for a cleaning of the system and restrict condis acessibility of classes. The only other thing I’d tweak is to bring more diversity of prefixes with the vitality stat, because that one is really helpful against condis.

To conclude, as long as players will play to win, and not play to fight, there won’t be any good solution to that. Players running direct damage are mostly lazy demanding kids that want to win as soon as the fight is engaged, and as soon as first spike has been played. Or zerglings, which is mostly the same.

Fun part is that this topic is about Trailblazer and Viper but not mentioning Marauder/Commander.

ThomasC.1056:

And that’s accurately the reason why this whole thread misses the spot. There’s no use ranting against dire, or zergs or stunlocks or whatever.

The wet dream is being able to melt any opponent in a matter of seconds while having 25k+ life and 3k+ armor. Oh, sure, no prefix allow you to run such stats alongside 3000+ power and 80% crit + 250% ferocity. That’s so bad…

Because dire and TB are such a big issue : they make fights last. That’s so troublesome. That’s so tiresome. That’s so tedious to have to fight for, maybe more than 100 seconds in a game mode that implies players fighting players, dodging, blocking, using invulns (to prevent condis from being applied).

Oh a condi boy…
I think you missed my point. Maybe you misread since my English is a bit “meh”.

If you read the previous posts you might figure that dire/TB gear is a nobrainer for condi classes and has no real downsides.

shagwell.1349:

Fun part is that this topic is about Trailblazer and Viper but not mentioning Marauder/Commander.

I’d venture to say that anyone who tries to compare tb/dire to mar/com doesn’t really know a lot at all about opportunity cost and how stats work. But that’s just me.

beatthedown.2651:

As you might know Dire/Trailblazer stats are pretty broken right now in WvW. There are other stats aswell, but if you make a tankier build for example, you have to trade off offensive stats. You might outsustain a 1v1, but you can’t kill anything in return(maybe after 5+ minutes).

That’s simply not the case when you use dire/TB stats. Condi runes and food also profit from the free defensive stats.

Just look at the stats of this Mesmer setup( don’t mind the build, it’s an abomination)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAW7flsnhy0YjawDNwtGLAHkZCCdAQT9Fb95I+QpB-TlRIQBVUJIiU/RN6GAwTAQM7PUQlfkC4uxWA-w

As a Power Mesmer this would be a wet dream running around with 3k armor and 25k life while doing loads of damage. How can these stats still exist after 4 years?

My point would be that Toughness should be traded against Precision. Now we have the vitality equivalent to Rabid gear.

Will condi gear still be good? Yes it will, but not that broken since you have at least sacrifice some defenses.

Come on Anet. If you really want to improve WvW you have to do some gear balancing. This has been requested for years. This does not even need much development effort, since you did the same thing with Magic Find gear back in 2013.

First off, I like most everyone else do agree with this being an issue.

If the current gear/trinket system continue then stats like Dire and Trailblazer should indeed be tweaked if not changed altogether.

I would propose an overall condition DURATION nerf across the board in WvW thus making Expertise a much more needed stat. Power builds rely on 3 stats (Power, Precision, and Ferocity) not including whatever sustain stats they can squeeze out afterwards. The condition meta allows for players to go for one stat, Condition Power, while filling in the rest with heaps of Vit/Toughness/Healing Power. With more of an emphasis on needing duration players would be more inclined to take less tanky options for more 3 stat choices with Expertise.
*Also proposed would be swapping Trailblazer’s primary toughness stat with expertise.

So, requiring expertise for “regular” condi durations like we have now is one option. But if ANet went with that option, it pigeonholes condi players into even fewer gear choices. There are only 3 gear prefixes in the game right now that have expertise as a stat, and 1 of those doesn’t have condi at all, so players would be left with either going with viper or trailblazers, both of which are HoT stats iirc, which unfairly kittens people who don’t own HoT. And of those 2 stat sets, one of them is still tanky. In the end I don’t see this changing much outside of just making gearing up for condi builds more expensive.

beatthedown.2651:

Yeah they could also revamp condis in general, but I don’t think this happens anytime soon. Adding secondary stats like condi-precision/ferocity would need some thought since the damage can be nullified by removal skills.

Regarding my suggestion by using Precision, they could also just convert the gear into carrion or rabid.

Exactly, give it more thought. I don’t see why the fundamentals of condi and power have to be so far apart. Why can’t they both have the same potential; to be either bursty or sustained DPS? With the same costs, mind you.

An easy step in the right direction would be to make it so that Resistance does not nullify all condi damage, but a % of it just like protection does with Power. Then you invent a condition that reduces condi damage just like weakness does. Even the playing field across the board.

This way, you would still allow for both playstyles, and for diversity in builds (one could try to be more tanky at the cost of a significant DPS loss, or vice versa).

Hell, I would gladly play condi if it wasn’t so kitten forgiving, the playstyle in itself is very appealing IMO.

The Game Slayer.7632:

I’d venture to say that anyone who tries to compare tb/dire to mar/com doesn’t really know a lot at all about opportunity cost and how stats work. But that’s just me.

I’d venture to say anyone that compares gear stats in isolation shouldn’t really be commenting on game balance as they clearly lack basic logic and understanding of what constitutes balance. (and beyond that in regard to WvW especially that they still haven’t learnt Anet don’t give two kittens anyway, is well…)

beatthedown.2651:

ThomasC.1056:

And that’s accurately the reason why this whole thread misses the spot. There’s no use ranting against dire, or zergs or stunlocks or whatever.

The wet dream is being able to melt any opponent in a matter of seconds while having 25k+ life and 3k+ armor. Oh, sure, no prefix allow you to run such stats alongside 3000+ power and 80% crit + 250% ferocity. That’s so bad…

Because dire and TB are such a big issue : they make fights last. That’s so troublesome. That’s so tiresome. That’s so tedious to have to fight for, maybe more than 100 seconds in a game mode that implies players fighting players, dodging, blocking, using invulns (to prevent condis from being applied).

Oh a condi boy…
I think you missed my point. Maybe you misread since my English is a bit “meh”.

If you read the previous posts you might figure that dire/TB gear is a nobrainer for condi classes and has no real downsides.

Don’t worry, your english is fine and I can read. The fact that I partially disagree with you doesn’t mean that either you or I are dumb. And by the way, I play mostly direct damage (only 2 of my toons are condi setup, and no dire in them).

Now, maybe you misread my post. I’m just saying that your complain is a symptom of a bigger behaviour : dire has a downside : it’s the relatively long amount of time needed for condis to drain an health pool. Maybe some are too powerful, I may agree on that point.
From the direct damage point of view, my point is : if you need to land your special combo 4 times to kill a dire condi user, you need to make sure you’ll survive long enough, therefore have some skill, and a build with high vitality, sustain utilities and traits (cleanses and stun breakers). If you read that paragraph with the WvW idea in mind, you’ll see how laughable it is, because it goes against the trend of quick fights settled in seconds.

And so, that is my point : if fights were to last longer, it’d bring more balance, and build diversity. But then again, it’s not only a matter of ANet’s way to balance things. It’s also a matter of players wanting it quick and easy, and dire stats are a dark cloud in that wet dream.

I’d even be fine with something like Condition damage/toughness/expertise as a means of having a bit more aggression to power builds while keeping weak to conditions due to the lack of provided health.

The existence of two or more defensive stats while dealing incredulous amounts of damage thanks to condition powercreep for PvE have made these builds just totally excessive.

And they’ve been on the fringes of being overpowered for longer than the condi buffs have been around for.

Dire was never even part of the release-level game; it was an afterthought when they removed the magic find stat from gear and wanted to compensate people with something new, and conditions early on were under-performing generally speaking since torment didn’t exist, burning and poison didn’t stack, and confusion wasn’t a DoT, so it made sense as a kit for non-bleed-heavy builds.

These days, though, since conditions just deal so much damage and ignore armor, there’s really no justification in keeping the kits around.

They already removed a type of stat combination before (on what was something fairly expensive overall) to implement dire; there’s no reason they couldn’t go back on that with the same exact process.

And no, Thomas, condi builds currently burst almost as quickly as power ones; I can achieve a 6-10k tick in < 2s on guardian and my reaper’s soul spiral frequently ticks for almost 3k within a two second window on a berserker build running no condition damage at all. My thief can get to 20k bleed ticks and 8k poison ticks in less than ten seconds – or 5k+ ticks immediately on engage, with most of the bleeding being unblockable. There are also a huge number of damage reduction effects in the game at the moment which only effect power damage; it’s not uncommon to find people taking > 70% damage reduction on permanent or near-permanent uptime. An all-in 20k power burst gets quickly turned into 6k and is left with substantially higher cooldowns than the 8s-and-under cooldowns you find on skills like Illusory Counter which deal > 10k condition damage.

The Game Slayer.7632:

shagwell.1349:

Fun part is that this topic is about Trailblazer and Viper but not mentioning Marauder/Commander.

I’d venture to say that anyone who tries to compare tb/dire to mar/com doesn’t really know a lot at all about opportunity cost and how stats work. But that’s just me.

My Engineer (no Scrapper) is in Celestial/Commander’s with Durability runes. I can crit people for up to 12k and have rifle skills that regularly do between 5k and 9k. I can full heal in about 2 seconds, have perma-Stability, Might, Fury, have 82% critical chance with traits and Fury (+30% in melee range at almost all times), 2.9k armor, 23k health, 173% Ferocity.

I am way, way more tanky on my Engineer than my condition Necromancer. I am way, more tanky on my Marauder Dragonhunter as well.

No matter how many times the complaint about Trailblazers, Dire or conditions in general is brought up, I’ll never understand how people think it’s OP. You got rekt by a condition bunker Chrono, okay, we all do once in a while. They’re over tuned. No need to punish everyone just because one profession is over performing and getting too much benefit from certain gear stats. If we’re going to nerf it across the board, I want all power stats to reduce the users maximum health by 10%.

DeceiverX.8361:

And no, Thomas, condi builds currently burst almost as quickly as power ones; I can achieve a 6-10k tick in < 2s on guardian and my reaper’s soul spiral frequently ticks for almost 3k within a two second window on a berserker build running no condition damage at all. My thief can get to 20k bleed ticks and 8k poison ticks in less than ten seconds – or 5k+ ticks immediately on engage, with most of the bleeding being unblockable. There are also a huge number of damage reduction effects in the game at the moment which only effect power damage; it’s not uncommon to find people taking > 70% damage reduction on permanent or near-permanent uptime. An all-in 20k power burst gets quickly turned into 6k and is left with substantially higher cooldowns than the 8s-and-under cooldowns you find on skills like Illusory Counter which deal > 10k condition damage.

Those levels are indeed no reasonnable, as you’re saying. Yet, I stick with the fact they should lower the damage, rather than lowering the sustain possibilities.
Also, on the direct damage mitigation topic, I agree there’s too much of it, but it’s more a matter of boons and traits than pure prefixes (even if toughness is a very common stat in lots of prefixes).

20k bleed ticks? Come on, you aren’t going to put 100 stacks of bleeds on a player. To “burst”, condi builds have to blow multiple (often long) cooldowns and hope, the enemy doesn’t cleanse, because they won’t have much left. Condi skills that deal 10k+ dmg usually take 10 or more seconds to deal that dmg. Meanwhile some power builds can deal 10k instantly every few seconds by pressing a single button. Sure, there is a lot of dmg reduction in the game, but there are lot’s of cleanses too. If people prefer to take toughness, protection and similar over cleanses or -condi duration, it is actually a sign, that direct dmg tends to be more dangerous without passive counters. You can’t compare power dmg vs target with lots of defense against power and condi dmg vs target with 0 condi defense. That’s obviously not a fair comparison.
Are some condi builds op? Sure. Are all condi builds op? No. Are some power builds op? Yes. So you can’t really nerf condis in general, let power builds untouched and call it balance.

Btw, i’m playing my ranger with about 3k armor and 20k hp and i can burst (<2 seconds) for 20k. And i’m playing a power build (not even an op one, because it is not all about pure numbers).

Imo boons are a way bigger issue in wvw than condis.

i can hit 10k posion in 4 seconds on thief but normaly hit player for about 4 – 5k

Taobella.6597:

i can hit 10k posion in 4 seconds on thief but normaly hit player for about 4 – 5k

The number on the tooltips are the damage for full duration. You’ll often see absurd values on them but you’ll rarely see their full damage go out (unless you are fighting someone that have 0 cleanses and no condition duration reductions). For exemple, my Engineer Blowtorch says it deal 17k Burning Damage. Imagine if that was for tick…

That is probably the worst condi mesmer build I’ve seen. Stop reading after I looked at it. Everything else you have to say is not valid.

Power builds do NOT need 3 stats from gear. People CHOOSE to do this because they want to do more damage and not because they do not do enough damage.

Power builds have the option of doing much more damage if thoey choose to give up some of that toughness and vitality. A condition build can not pump out a lot more damage when they do so. They have a lower ceiling which hardly tanslates into “power builds need 3 stats and condition only one”. Having more choices does not mean having more needs.

My Power warrior has 26k health and 3.1 k armor. He can build 25 stacks of might easily and generally has over 15 stacks in combat at minimum . He has close to 2300 base power which with stacking fron bloodlusts pushes him to 2550. The might means he can maintain well over 3 k in power. This with a 100 percent crit rate and 190 percent ferocity.

He has access to resistance from two sources which makes him immune to conditions for long periods of time. So he does have ~3.2k armor 25k plus health and pmps out excellent damage ,

If he WANTED to he could sacrifice some of this for even more damage but he sees no need to.

By the way all of those people in Dire armor or trailbalzers are just as susceptible to conditions.

Again this not an objective argument. The people that advance this argument just do not like condition builds. It has nothing to do with them being OP or with dire or with trailblazer.

My thief can pump out 8k unloads rather easily against heavy armor. Put a guy in light and those unloads jump dramatically. Were it not for those condition builds having access to higher toughness and health they would be DESTROYED in seconds, long before their conditions had enough time to do any significant damage.

babazhook.6805:

My thief can pump out 8k unloads rather easily against heavy armor.

Your post was mediocre at best, and then you bring up unload… For arguments sake, when that heavy armored guy hits you with, say, an Arc Divider, you take 10k+. That’s because you had to sacrifice defensive stats to make unload do an incredible 8k damage.

Conditions allow you to do incredible damage whilst remaining super tanky, and it is very easy to do so. This is speaking generally, off course. When the condi player is skilled, the real power of certain builds becomes more obvious. Specifically condi warrior and mesmer are culprits here.
I can live with a good condi mesmer shrekking me, because I generally don’t take a lot of condi clears (I just tend to avoid these tryhard players with the 20% duration food and the 10% duration oil). So when I do fight one, I either kick the kitten out of him because he is the general ‘need-my-dire-to-carry-me’ player, or he quickly puts seemingly endless stacks of confusion and torment on me, at which point I decide it’s not worth it to entertain my opponent.

The risk/reward factor of condi builds is very off in WvW, and in the game in general.

That doesn’t mean certain power builds don’t suffer from the same problem.

Cygnus.6903:

babazhook.6805:

My thief can pump out 8k unloads rather easily against heavy armor.

Your post was mediocre at best, and then you bring up unload… For arguments sake, when that heavy armored guy hits you with, say, an Arc Divider, you take 10k+. That’s because you had to sacrifice defensive stats to make unload do an incredible 8k damage.

Conditions allow you to do incredible damage whilst remaining super tanky, and it is very easy to do so. This is speaking generally, off course. When the condi player is skilled, the real power of certain builds becomes more obvious. Specifically condi warrior and mesmer are culprits here.
I can live with a good condi mesmer shrekking me, because I generally don’t take a lot of condi clears (I just tend to avoid these tryhard players with the 20% duration food and the 10% duration oil). So when I do fight one, I either kick the kitten out of him because he is the general ‘need-my-dire-to-carry-me’ player, or he quickly puts seemingly endless stacks of confusion and torment on me, at which point I decide it’s not worth it to entertain my opponent.

The risk/reward factor of condi builds is very off in WvW, and in the game in general.

That doesn’t mean certain power builds don’t suffer from the same problem.

You totally missed the point.

I made the point about unload not to show what arc divider can do to me. I made the point to show how much damage i can generate in a power build in ONE SINGLE attack. the problem with you “dire overpowered” people is you do not think anything through.

My warrior can get that 10k head butt or that arc divider and STILL be sitting in 3.1k armor . Got it? A condition attack can not do that against ANY armor type in one single attack. This armor/health is higher then most of those mesmers generate and if he faced a condition warrior he would destroy him.

Please show me an attack by one of your condition builds that can generate 10k in damage or more AS MY p/p can in a single attack. Forget what was “sacrificed” to do that as I alreayd pointed out this was a CHOICE and not forced. You do not HAVE TO sacrifice defensive stats. You choose to.

That p/p thief I am talking about has just over 20k health in wVw in a power build along with 2400 armor. He started with more armor then that (using sentenils) because he WANTED to. he found that as he scaled back his armor for more power and even more damage his survival went UP because he can kill people including your condition builds in their 3.2k armor faster. He was not forced to do this.

The point I am making when i made this example is in a condition build the toughness of the enemy immaterial. If I am fighting heavy armor or light armor I am not generating a 10k single hit attack ever.

Since I can do this in one single attack wheras a condition build would need to get several attacks in so as to generate those ticks, having those condition builds frced into using lighter armors or having less vitality means they are DEAD to any power attack in seconds. They could not outdamage power unless they have the time to do so and with your 10k arc dividers, 10k headbutts , 14k unloads they would never have that time with less toughness and vitality.

Dire and trailblazers is NOT an issue. If my power thief can kill a warrior in 3k+ armor and 26k health , he can kill a person in dire with 3.2k armor and 26k health. Against that power warrior my thief can not afford any mistakes. Against a condition build he can make more then a few.

Condi is borked with this all or nothing design. Dire isn’t broken but it does take advantage of the condi mess. Trailblazer along with most 4 stat gear is broken as it has 10% more stat points. One piece here or there isn’t much but 10% in every slot is. A player would almost have to be a fool to invest in 3 stat over 4 stat gear in many cases.

Straegen.2938:

Condi is borked with this all or nothing design. Dire isn’t broken but it does take advantage of the condi mess. Trailblazer along with most 4 stat gear is broken as it has 10% more stat points. One piece here or there isn’t much but 10% in every slot is. A player would almost have to be a fool to invest in 3 stat over 4 stat gear in many cases.

People should focus on what the real problem is and it neither dire or TB. It is the amount of raw damage being pumped out. This has increased significantly since day one while total health has remained at the same value. This extra damage is not exclusive to conditions. It across the board . The reality is that pre changes the power builds were much further ahead in damage output then were condition builds and even as they too gained more damage output, the percentage output that Condition builds saw increased , having started at a lower level , was greater.

This does not mean condition builds do more damage then power builds. It means they can now do enough while maintaining the margin of safety that dire offers which is needed in any condition build.

Power users CAN sacrifice the things dire equivalent offers to pump even more damage . Very few condition type builds have this option. I suggest that if they could suddenly doube condition damage output by giving up toughness and vitality they would.

Would it help having a new type of secondary attribute, say ‘prowess’ for the sake of argument, that meant Conditions Drop Rate? Investing on it would mean a direct counter to condis just as ‘toughness is to power’ right? Btw I wouldn’t say ‘vitality is to conditions’ as that’s simply not the case, you still eat whatever damage comes regardless of your health buffer.

I can’t begin to imagine the tremendous technical effort that implementing this would require but ArenaNet has effectively introduced new attributes in the past, it wouldn’t be something impossible to happen.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Sure, there is a lot of dmg reduction in the game, but there are lot’s of cleanses too. If people prefer to take toughness, protection and similar over cleanses or -condi duration, it is actually a sign, that direct dmg tends to be more dangerous without passive counters. You can’t compare power dmg vs target with lots of defense against power and condi dmg vs target with 0 condi defense. That’s obviously not a fair comparison.
Are some condi builds op? Sure. Are all condi builds op? No. Are some power builds op? Yes. So you can’t really nerf condis in general, let power builds untouched and call it balance.

This.

Especially the part about when people used to run anti-condition things and how no one does now.

I just want to state that I’ve been playing a vanilla condition Necromancer for 3 years. Without +Condition Duration food, even in full Trailblazers (mind you without +Duration runes), I feel like I’m losing out significantly on damage pressure without food. Which means even with Expertise, I still need more duration to be dangerous because of how easily people can shed conditions. In full Dire, which has no +Duration, I don’t think I’d be killing anything that had cleanses. It would basically be the equivalent of being in Soldiers at this point in the games life. Expertise is the condition version of Ferocity and you need it if you want to be dangerous against anyone who has cleanses.

Condition bunker Chrono is the problem and people not taking ample condition clears is the problem. Don’t blame conditions as a whole. Yes some could use reworking but again, stop trying to get them nerfed across the board just because you dislike them.

babazhook.6805:

People should focus on what the real problem is and it neither dire or TB. It is the amount of raw damage being pumped out. This has increased significantly since day one while total health has remained at the same value. This extra damage is not exclusive to conditions. It across the board . The reality is that pre changes the power builds were much further ahead in damage output then were condition builds and even as they too gained more damage output, the percentage output that Condition builds saw increased , having started at a lower level , was greater.

This does not mean condition builds do more damage then power builds. It means they can now do enough while maintaining the margin of safety that dire offers which is needed in any condition build.

Power users CAN sacrifice the things dire equivalent offers to pump even more damage . Very few condition type builds have this option. I suggest that if they could suddenly doube condition damage output by giving up toughness and vitality they would.

Very well put. Damage output across the board has escalated wildly since specialisations and HoT were introduced. I too am constantly in shock at the damage I do now. Pre-specialisations I used to have to run full zerk to get the damage numbers I can get on my Knight’s/Marauder’s/Captain’s/Zerk mixtures I use now. It’s pretty mad, but then none of the grand changes that have been made to the game since 2015 have ever taken into account the impact it will have on WvW.

Straegen.2938:

Condi is borked with this all or nothing design. Dire isn’t broken but it does take advantage of the condi mess. Trailblazer along with most 4 stat gear is broken as it has 10% more stat points. One piece here or there isn’t much but 10% in every slot is. A player would almost have to be a fool to invest in 3 stat over 4 stat gear in many cases.

Marauder and Commander armor also have 10% more stats than 3-stat gear, but people don’t come crying on the forum about them, only about the condition ones.

Those 20k bleed ticks sound op. Can condi necro make 20k bleed ticks? I usually get like 1k ticks. If i don’t remember wrong necromancer does like 4.5k or something ticks in raids.

shagwell.1349:

Fun part is that this topic is about Trailblazer and Viper but not mentioning Marauder/Commander.

This is quite funny. Die to a condi player in 20 seconds or a power player in 10. While we’re at it let’s just make all players run around in white armor swinging white swords at each other.

What mystifies me most about this entire debate is that in arguing that dire and TB as being OP what is it that people think keeps condition players that wear this stuff alive against condition players?

Should they not be dying instantly to one another as people claims happens to the Power users?

The fact remains that power damage is still greater than condition damage on any single attack. Condition damage is blind to toughness so whether the enemy player has more or less armor , it no great advantage or disadvantage against a condition build. Condition builds fight condition builds and do not rely on armor to defeat said build. They rely on skill , avoidance ,cleanses and outputting more damage than the condition build they face.

Skill , avoidance , cleanses and outputting more damage is available to any power build.

Dire and TB is not the issue.

babazhook.6805:

Skill , cleanses and outputting more damage is available to any power build.

And remove DPS utilities from my skill bar? PREPOSTEROUS!

Jeknar.6184:

Straegen.2938:

Condi is borked with this all or nothing design. Dire isn’t broken but it does take advantage of the condi mess. Trailblazer along with most 4 stat gear is broken as it has 10% more stat points. One piece here or there isn’t much but 10% in every slot is. A player would almost have to be a fool to invest in 3 stat over 4 stat gear in many cases.

Marauder and Commander armor also have 10% more stats than 3-stat gear, but people don’t come crying on the forum about them, only about the condition ones.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Epidemic-and-ways-to-balance-it

I mentioned it, all the HOT gears, but apparently people don’t cares about balance, only cares about maintaining their comfort zone.

Build wars 2.
Casual wars 2.

Ask yourself, why haven’t the pvp specific skill balance changes been applied to wvw?
Ask yourself, are pve raids creating a hard floor for the amount of damage a class can produce?
Ask yourself, on any single build, what is the actual damage output difference between dire and sinister?

The combat interaction in this gamemode is quickly moving beyond cheese.

Jeknar.6184:

Taobella.6597:

i can hit 10k posion in 4 seconds on thief but normaly hit player for about 4 – 5k

The number on the tooltips are the damage for full duration. You’ll often see absurd values on them but you’ll rarely see their full damage go out (unless you are fighting someone that have 0 cleanses and no condition duration reductions). For exemple, my Engineer Blowtorch says it deal 17k Burning Damage. Imagine if that was for tick…

lol. no i was talking single tick of poison thief can achieve 10k in 8 seconds. not over course of w/e the skill is

i was wrong it not 4s it 8s XD close enough

This requires at least 40 stacks of poison, assuming 1 stack ticks with about 250.
I’m curious, how you want to get there. Steal – 2 stacks, 2x needle trap – 2 stacks, spider venom – 6 stacks (+12 with thieves guild), then you can apply some more with choking gas or dagger auto, but that’s not going to be 30 stacks, so where do you get the missing poison from? And even if it is somehow possible to apply that much poison (or bleeding), you basically have to blow all your cds and hope, the enemy does nothing for several seconds. Sounds really op, that condi “burst”.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

This requires at least 40 stacks of poison, assuming 1 stack ticks with about 250.
I’m curious, how you want to get there. Steal – 2 stacks, 2x needle trap – 2 stacks, spider venom – 6 stacks (+12 with thieves guild), then you can apply some more with choking gas or dagger auto, but that’s not going to be 30 stacks, so where do you get the missing poison from? And even if it is somehow possible to apply that much poison (or bleeding), you basically have to blow all your cds and hope, the enemy does nothing for several seconds. Sounds really op, that condi “burst”.

You can get there with venom share on its on with 6*5 on its own.

Other sources could be impairing daggers (X3) and dagger mastery. If in a d/d db build dagger mastery can apply up to three stacks per iteration albeit you will rarely get that amount. There no cooldown so the three attacks can apply it each time. It short lived and in real game terms you will likely not get more then 4 stacks off this on an ongoing basis.

I indeed forgot about impairing daggers. Venom share requires the help from other players though or thieves guild + ambush for a max of (2*)4*6 stacks. So yes, it is possible to get to 40+ stacks once every 3 minutes, if you precast the venom at the right moment and the target does nothing for several seconds. Sounds as op as a full nomad bunker ranger, who oneshots players with drakes (Yes, it is possible – and yet the build sucks …)

UmbraNoctis.1907:

I indeed forgot about impairing daggers. Venom share requires the help from other players though or thieves guild + ambush for a max of (2*)4*6 stacks. So yes, it is possible to get to 40+ stacks once every 3 minutes, if you precast the venom at the right moment and the target does nothing for several seconds.

It will rarely happen against a player unless he just stands on point and does little in response. You can build these sort of stacks against a champion defending a point and especially if you use a whirl in the poison field via SB then switching to d/d and deathblossom.

You will rearely get this against any other type of NPC as they dead long before , indeed I am not sure as to how many players can live long enough so as to allow 40 poison stacks on them. If they are accumulating to that degree they likely dead long before especially when considering this likely not the only condition on them.

highest i could get myself was around 35 stacks

So idea is nerf condi gear so much that 40 poison stacks won’t kill enemy fast? If i would be dev i would nerf this spec that can make 40 stack of poison. Well maybe i am just stupid.

ok guys the problem with condi spam is not only the ridiculous amount of damage one player can put on you, but also that damage keep ticking ignoring LoS.

So many times the condi spam build condi bomb you and because you can’t keep cleansing at the same speed they can apply them you simply die.

Some overtunned conditions like burning, confusion and torment do simply too much damage passively, and some classes has even passive procs of that condition.

Yep, some condition damages and why some classes get to apply such strong conditions continuously is something i don’t understand.

Junkpile.7439:

So idea is nerf condi gear so much that 40 poison stacks won’t kill enemy fast? If i would be dev i would nerf this spec that can make 40 stack of poison. Well maybe i am just stupid.

I don’t even know who can make 40 stacks of poison besides Necro doing Soul Spiral on top of a Poison Field. And he need to be right on top of the target for that.
Honestly, I see a lot of people talking about these high condition ticks but I never see them, and no one ever bothered posting a screenshot of a single condition doing the 10k-20k bursts they claim that they do.

Jeknar.6184:

Junkpile.7439:

So idea is nerf condi gear so much that 40 poison stacks won’t kill enemy fast? If i would be dev i would nerf this spec that can make 40 stack of poison. Well maybe i am just stupid.

I don’t even know who can make 40 stacks of poison besides Necro doing Soul Spiral on top of a Poison Field. And he need to be right on top of the target for that.
Honestly, I see a lot of people talking about these high condition ticks but I never see them, and no one ever bothered posting a screenshot of a single condition doing the 10k-20k bursts they claim that they do.

It’s because they have no SS’s of these massive bursts from condi. Is it theoretically possible to achieve high burst? Of course, yet not as easy as it is to achieve ultra-high bursts out of a power build, and the condi can be deleted with a cleanse, whereas the power is instant. This smacks of, “Wah I couldn’t beat a (better) player, because they were condi!”. When in reality they were just a better player.

^Not true in all cases. I’ve fought plenty of people that were without a doubt carried by condi. It was a pain to take them down despite being fully specced against condis, I called them out on their cheese build saying it carried them. they attempt to prove me wrong saying its skill. Switch to a power build and attempt to fight me again. I roflstomp them in a split second without even bothering to change anything to defend against power builds. So without a doubt, there are plenty of players carried by condi.

^^ Add to that, hard hitting power hits are normally telegraphed quite a lot, which lends itself to dodging (or other mitigations), thereby negating all damage.

Some big condi skills are also highly telegraphed, but their damage or CD usually compensates the risk of being cleared (e.g. some insanely high damage if the skill went uncleansed, but still a high burst if it gets cleansed midway).

That much of the applied condi is low telegraph and incremental, dodges are less valuable than with power, and it doesn’t take much to overwhelm an opponent’s condi cleanses (especially with high condi diversity).

Meaning, the justification for Dire seems weak to me. Condi can burst, lockdown, etc. more now than ever, and the number of invulns and other mitigations a number of classes can chain together after application, you can’t reasonably say condi users need double defensive stats on an otherwise full (condi) damage build.

Nikkinella.8254:

^Not true in all cases. I’ve fought plenty of people that were without a doubt carried by condi. It was a pain to take them down despite being fully specced against condis, I called them out on their cheese build saying it carried them. they attempt to prove me wrong saying its skill. Switch to a power build and attempt to fight me again. I roflstomp them in a split second without even bothering to change anything to defend against power builds. So without a doubt, there are plenty of players carried by condi.

This is hardly “proof” that they are carrried by Condition. I can make short work of a person on my power thief, switch to another class and lose. This does not prove that thief is carrying me. It just means I am more used to thief and know best how to play it or that theif is a better counter to a given build.

I also know people that switch from power builds to condition builds on the same profession and lose. Within a class they can “play” as differently as two separate professions.

A condition versus a powertype build can also be a better natural counter within the same profession. As example there necromancer builds that uses Minions that can easily neutralize a condition build via the combination of cleanses and condition transfers coupled with “necromatic corruption”. Switch up to power against this build and you can do much better.

babazhook.6805:

That p/p thief I am talking about has just over 20k health in wVw in a power build along with 2400 armor. He started with more armor then that (using sentenils) because he WANTED to. he found that as he scaled back his armor for more power and even more damage his survival went UP because he can kill people including your condition builds in their 3.2k armor faster. He was not forced to do this.

~snip~

Dire and trailblazers is NOT an issue. If my power thief can kill a warrior in 3k+ armor and 26k health , he can kill a person in dire with 3.2k armor and 26k health. Against that power warrior my thief can not afford any mistakes. Against a condition build he can make more then a few.

This is so far off from reality, it’s quite obvious to me that you approach this from a theoretical point of view.

A thief with 20k+ health and 2,4k armor will not kill anything quickly. 8k unloads also seem highly unlikely. I know this, because I run a full berserk thief with Scholar runes quite often, and those numbers don’t occur unless you fight something equally glassy. On a sidenote, I think its funny you say its 8k damage on a single attack, as most people (with a brain) will dodge 3/4th of your unload (which is a single button press, but 8 attacks).

If you can show me a vid of you beating a Dire warrior (or any other class for that matter) in 3,2k armor and 26k health with making several of your allowed mistakes, I’ll be surprised.

At least when you are fightign that power warrior, the ’can’t afford any mistakes’-mentality goes both ways. If the warrior screws up a bit too much, a good thief will punish. The Dire warrior can take backstabs and /dance.

The whole discussion looks only about theoretical numbers and ignores many other factors that determine whether something is op or not …

How strong a build is, depends mostly on traits and skills and situations, not on stats. Sure, certain stats can make a good build stronger, but it is never the deciding factor. If you put dire/tb gear on a strong condi build , the outcome might be op. But if you slap it on a bad condi build – the build will remain bad. Same goes for something like zerk or marauder gear. I mean, it’s not like there aren’t any op power builds …
That’s why balance should be based on traits and skills, not on stats. Stat changes are very unlikely to happen anyways, so why even waste time on proposals like this, instead of suggesting changes to traits and skills, that might be more realistic?