Guild Wars 2

Hello all,

I am unsure if a post like this has been made before or not, so I’m just creating a new topic.

I, along with my friends whom I play with, feel that conditions are overwhelming; not necessarily that they are overpowered, just that there is little counterplay to them.

We feel that conditions are in a nice place; however, there is no stat that mitigates condition damage/duration except for vitality…

A simple way for me to explain what I’m thinking is as follows:

For power builds to work, players invest in Power, Precision, Ferocity (3 stats)
Where as, condition builds focus on Condition Damage and Duration (2 stats)
> Condition builds only have 2 stats to worry about and can invest in another stat…

Countering a power build, players can invest in toughness, vitality, and/or healing power (3 stats)
For a condition build, players only have vitality and/or healing power to focus on (2 stats)
> There are 2 stats that work against a power build, while only vitality works to against conditions

I guess what I want to say is: when building for a condition build, there isn’t as many stats to invest in which allows for the build to focus on survivability; where as in a power build, players don’t have as many stats free to invest towards survivability because of how many stats they should invest offensively…

Please let me hear your thoughts

Well, you forget the fact you also have to be worried about what will bring you conditions. I highly doubt a Warrior with sigil of earth will just skip the precision, and that makes three stats.

18k base health. no need for vitality so you go for precicison thoughness and cond damage on a warrior. use deep strike trait for extra bleed duration. problem solved.

you dont even need condition duration if you can spam the conditions or use certain traits/runes.

Condition Duration makes it easier to spam/stack conditions, Jekkt – It’s the difference between struggling to keep 3 stacks of Bleed on someone, and coasting at 12-15.

Scrye.9278:

Hello all,

I am unsure if a post like this has been made before or not, so I’m just creating a new topic.

I, along with my friends whom I play with, feel that conditions are overwhelming; not necessarily that they are overpowered, just that there is little counterplay to them.

We feel that conditions are in a nice place; however, there is no stat that mitigates condition damage/duration except for vitality…

A simple way for me to explain what I’m thinking is as follows:

For power builds to work, players invest in Power, Precision, Ferocity (3 stats)
Where as, condition builds focus on Condition Damage and Duration (2 stats)
> Condition builds only have 2 stats to worry about and can invest in another stat…

Countering a power build, players can invest in toughness, vitality, and/or healing power (3 stats)
For a condition build, players only have vitality and/or healing power to focus on (2 stats)
> There are 2 stats that work against a power build, while only vitality works to against conditions

I guess what I want to say is: when building for a condition build, there isn’t as many stats to invest in which allows for the build to focus on survivability; where as in a power build, players don’t have as many stats free to invest towards survivability because of how many stats they should invest offensively…

Please let me hear your thoughts

Situational hence balanced.

WvW, GWEN meta, condis are nearly useless. The N in the Gwen are mostly power / hybrid necros, pure condis no good.

There are also way too many passive abilities and gear that affect condis.

I think it would be a great idea to remove or scale down a lot of the spammable AOE condi removal in the game along with the passives, and replace them with more individual and active condi removal abilities. This way a class / build player that dies easily to condis will end up with no one to blame but themselves for their own choices.

Now, if you are already one of the classes that has a ton of condi removal / prevention, just choose to not use it, then that is obviously your choice and you should hold yourself responsible for it.

Also, you are assuming that whatever is dishing out the condis is a zerk build, and ask for condi nerfs due to the way it works against zerk builds. Assume opposite, assume condi dealers target is tanky as hell, has melandru + appropriate consumables and stacks anti-condi traits as well as passives and actives. Then balance it according to that.

Conditions on WvW are only to support damage and spike stress certain groups/players.

Conditions do have counterplay to them. Firstly, condition applying attacks are rarely superior to regular power attacks, so they can be dodged, blocked, evaded, blinded, countered by stun, etc. Second, conditions have cleanses. Third and most dangerous, there are classes that can transfer conditions, which is arguably the most powerful counter in the game. It literally transfers all remaining damage of an attack to someone else.

I think it’s far more important that conditions become easier to avoid and stop being so generously applied via AoE and stuff like exploding clones.

They also need to separate damage conditions from crowd-control instead of lumping them both together.

And in general, condition removal skills, aside from a few exceptions, seem to assume you will be affected by a condition once every 5-10 seconds or so, instead of being constantly bombarded by them 24/7.

melandru + lemongrass
antitoxin + lemongrass
really, anything with -duration
thats the metagame counterplay youre looking for, you just dont understand that the strongest counter comes from a different place than your gear stats

Every single class has at least one condi clear skill. That’s your counterplay. Some classes like necros, are also the worst ones to come across while playing condi because of what they can do with condis. Consume Conditions and Plague Signet are probably two of the most dangerous skills a necro has against a condi build.

Scrye.9278:

Hello all,

I am unsure if a post like this has been made before or not, so I’m just creating a new topic.

I, along with my friends whom I play with, feel that conditions are overwhelming; not necessarily that they are overpowered, just that there is little counterplay to them.

We feel that conditions are in a nice place; however, there is no stat that mitigates condition damage/duration except for vitality…

A simple way for me to explain what I’m thinking is as follows:

For power builds to work, players invest in Power, Precision, Ferocity (3 stats)
Where as, condition builds focus on Condition Damage and Duration (2 stats)
> Condition builds only have 2 stats to worry about and can invest in another stat…

Countering a power build, players can invest in toughness, vitality, and/or healing power (3 stats)
For a condition build, players only have vitality and/or healing power to focus on (2 stats)
> There are 2 stats that work against a power build, while only vitality works to against conditions

I guess what I want to say is: when building for a condition build, there isn’t as many stats to invest in which allows for the build to focus on survivability; where as in a power build, players don’t have as many stats free to invest towards survivability because of how many stats they should invest offensively…

Please let me hear your thoughts

To simplistic a view, you take evades, blocks, blinds, invulns, heal, teleports, stun breaks to deal with incoming damage that can be both condition damage and direct since those help against both types. Then you take toughness, vitality, and healing power to go also deal with direct damage with vitality and healing overlapping defenses to condition damage. Then on top of that you have cleanses which specifically target conditions.

You can’t have everything in your build but that is where choice and sacrifice come in. If you are getting overwhelmed by conditions then you need to take more condition management same goes for direct damage.

TL&DR GW2 combat has many layers. You don’t stand there and chop at each other trading auto attacks otherwise everyone would be in Soldiers gear.

How do you counter conditions? Cleanse them while power bashing the offender into the digital earth. Conditions take time and fall off quickly when the opponent is dead.

Raiff.6742:

How do you counter conditions? Cleanse them while power bashing the offender into the digital earth. Conditions take time and fall off quickly when the opponent is dead.

Also, dodging works. Just like against any other attack. Or blocking. Or being invulnerable. Or any of the other defence mechanisms which work against direct damage PLUS you can cleanse then PLUS they take quite a time (compared to direct damage) to actually be dangerous (so you can recycle skills and heal the damage or do something else like flee to team mates with cleansing).

On my thief.

When I am involved in large scale fights there little use for condition removal as there plenty of group cleanses. One of shadowstep or shadowrefuge is enough.

When I am worried about those at a smaller scale I have with me a condition cleanse (which everyone should have) and a sigil of Generosity weapon plus purity. These in conjunction with shadowstep and or shadow refuge is plenty of counterplay.

No Sigil available can “prevent” damage as can these two sigils.

People do not want to use them because they would rather pump out more damage with their fire and sigil of strength and the like. This is their choice. Bursting damage so as to spike the enemy down before that enemy can get those conditions on IS counterplay just as that enemies avoiding said damage is.

With a ranger one can take the traits Empathic bond along with survival of the fittest and clear conditions to the point they are rarely on you.

Guardians and elementalists have plenty of condition cleanses available as do warriors if they use the right gear and armor and all of these classes can get two more cleanses every 10 seconds with sigils if they wished. Necros can simply consume all conditions for a massive heal or move them all back to you. They also have traits that cleanse them.

There are runes that counter conditions and the soup.

It interesting to note that as I peruse the “build threads” people are boasting about the damage their builds can pump out yet few of those builds make an attempt to maximize condition removal. Apparently it not that big an issue. If they such an issue why are so many using Runes of Strength over Soldiers runes with a shout build?

The reality is this in my opinion.

People want to tank and build for direct damage and or Zerg and use skills and traits so as to maximize damage output. In so doing they expose themselves to death by conditions and therefore claim they are “overpowered”. When that other player “counterplays” their burst damage and wins by attrition they then claim “no counterplay”.

Outplayed does not mean no counterplay and yes gear , traits and skills chosen is part of playing the game. It is not ALL pressing keys faster.

Scrye.9278:

Hello all,

I am unsure if a post like this has been made before or not, so I’m just creating a new topic.

I, along with my friends whom I play with, feel that conditions are overwhelming; not necessarily that they are overpowered, just that there is little counterplay to them.

We feel that conditions are in a nice place; however, there is no stat that mitigates condition damage/duration except for vitality…

A simple way for me to explain what I’m thinking is as follows:

For power builds to work, players invest in Power, Precision, Ferocity (3 stats)
Where as, condition builds focus on Condition Damage and Duration (2 stats)
> Condition builds only have 2 stats to worry about and can invest in another stat…

Countering a power build, players can invest in toughness, vitality, and/or healing power (3 stats)
For a condition build, players only have vitality and/or healing power to focus on (2 stats)
> There are 2 stats that work against a power build, while only vitality works to against conditions

I guess what I want to say is: when building for a condition build, there isn’t as many stats to invest in which allows for the build to focus on survivability; where as in a power build, players don’t have as many stats free to invest towards survivability because of how many stats they should invest offensively…

Please let me hear your thoughts

GW2 combat is extremely active. In other words, you don’t just equip a shield and get a “block chance,” you actually have to use a block skill to block important attacks.

It’s the same with condition damage. You don’t just have a “condition damage reducing stat,” you have to use active defenses to dodge, block, and cleanse important condition attacks.

Funny title is funny. Conds have more viable counter play than power.

Conditions have as much if not more counterplay than direct damage. You can avoid the application itself or cleanse it afterwards, and generally speaking each individual hit isn’t all that important as long as you don’t let them ramp up.

At most some professions need more accessible ways to clear damaging conditions only.

Sartharina.3542:

Condition Duration makes it easier to spam/stack conditions, Jekkt – It’s the difference between struggling to keep 3 stacks of Bleed on someone, and coasting at 12-15.

condi spam = fast applying of conditions. duration is for stacking. to spam conditions you need stuff like geomancy runes, bleed skills and bleeds on crit. big kitten nal of different conditions is helpful too of course.

usually conditions come from auto attacks and auto attacks will never have long duration conditions. more conditions with a fast applyable short duration is actually better against condi cleanse than few stacks with long duration.

I don’t think counterplay is the right word for it.
I tend to feel like they just don’t have much gameplay at all.

Too much of it just sort of happens; with no real intent, respect for timing, or truly distinguishable tactical difference to direct damage. The whole process has alot of churn; icons are appearing and dissapearing, colors are changing, particle effects are doing their thing… but on a mechanical level it all feels so featureless.

I can’t say I ever really put much thought behind removing conditions or applying them beyond immobilize and stuns. I think I can count on one hand how many times I feel like I’d applied a damaging condition for it’s damage properties in a ‘clutch’ way. Even the ones that have secondary effects that should be promoting gameplay, either under-emphasizes the decisions the opponent has to make or tends to err towards encouraging constant uptime over timely execution. (Like, Poison, which is way more fascinating on paper than I’ve ever experienced in practice).

Maybe you should try putting more thought into it counterplaying conditions. Surprisingly, condition builds have abilities that are just as important to dodge as power builds, with pretty obvious tells as well. There are also times when cleanses are best used, that do require thought.

Take, for example, the P/D condi thief that everyone loves to hate. Save your condition clears for steal, when they apply poison and confusion. The confusion will apply only on interrupt every 21 seconds, or on every steal, but with a 27 second cooldown. Plenty of time for cleanses to cooldown.

Are they running into melee? They’re about to CnD for stealth. Now is a good time to dodge. Still got the CnD off? Save your next dodge for their sneak attack. It has a one second channel and you can dodge a large portion of the bleed stacks by dodging the second you see them appear. Don’t dodge beforehand, good thieves will wait for you to waste a dodge.

What about the bleeds from the auto attack? Don’t bother dodging or wasting cleanses on these. Just like a power build’s auto attacks, there will always be a steady income of damage that will get through. Do you dodge autos from power builds?

Vox Hollow.2736:

I don’t think counterplay is the right word for it.
I tend to feel like they just don’t have much gameplay at all.

Too much of it just sort of happens; with no real intent, respect for timing, or truly distinguishable tactical difference to direct damage. The whole process has alot of churn; icons are appearing and dissapearing, colors are changing, particle effects are doing their thing… but on a mechanical level it all feels so featureless.

I can’t say I ever really put much thought behind removing conditions or applying them beyond immobilize and stuns. I think I can count on one hand how many times I feel like I’d applied a damaging condition for it’s damage properties in a ‘clutch’ way. Even the ones that have secondary effects that should be promoting gameplay, either under-emphasizes the decisions the opponent has to make or tends to err towards encouraging constant uptime over timely execution. (Like, Poison, which is way more fascinating on paper than I’ve ever experienced in practice).

I see where you’re coming from, but I also whole-heartedly disagree with your sentiment.

Conditions are about pacing, if you’re doing it well. Some builds don’t really have to do it well, but the ones who do you’ll always feel like there aren’t quite enough condis on you to warrant a clear. That’s the mark of a condition build that is being played well. Many people just spam their “condi burst” all at once, and it’s susceptible to being cleared and leaving the condi user much more impotent than he/she would otherwise be.

It’s a different style of play. You don’t necessarily shoutcast condition play, but that doesn’t mean it is less technically interesting for some folks. I’ve had to deal with so many confusion engis/PU mesmers/condi Thieves in 1on1 encounters that I watch my conditions like a hawk. The difference between a good transfer and a bad one is the difference between winning and losing.

Not all power is clutch, either. Do you think I dagger auto in a clutch way? Do you think I Axe #2 in a clutch way? If anything, my condition applications are much more clutch. Blind timings, chill timings, transfer timings. Everything to do with Conditions is more clutch than any Power attack I use, because Power is just a general means to keep pressure on while I administer my condition-based control.

In a game like this, and when Toughness reduces the effectiveness of direct damage, I think conditions are a mechanical necessity. Sure, they could be done differently, and I think the system could be improved upon for sure. However, this isn’t NBA Jam, where you just go for hilarious flashy dunks and scream “OOOOOOOOOOOOH!”. And I don’t think it should be. A little tempo control I think really adds to the game and rounds it off well.

And if people just choose not to bring condition counters, then I have no pity for them. I’ve been forcing condition clears into my builds since my first 80 ventured out into WvW. I feel like I’m the only Necro who roams WvW with Plague Signet, which astounds me considering how good it is on so many different levels, especially since they fixed its interaction with Blind.

So regardless of the fact that I think conditions could be improved, I like that they exist.

Jekkt.6045:

Sartharina.3542:

Condition Duration makes it easier to spam/stack conditions, Jekkt – It’s the difference between struggling to keep 3 stacks of Bleed on someone, and coasting at 12-15.

condi spam = fast applying of conditions. duration is for stacking. to spam conditions you need stuff like geomancy runes, bleed skills and bleeds on crit. big kitten nal of different conditions is helpful too of course.

usually conditions come from auto attacks and auto attacks will never have long duration conditions. more conditions with a fast applyable short duration is actually better against condi cleanse than few stacks with long duration.

Necro scepter/focus condi build applies 2 stacks of 10.5 second bleeds and 7 seconds of poison every auto attack cycle. Grasping Dead applies 3 stacks at 13.5 seconds, and signet of spite applies 2 stacks of bleed for 18 seconds. Grasping Dead → Signet of Spite → AA → Grasping Dead → Epidemic: ~20-25 stacks of bleed dropped in an AoE. Combined with the Necro trait that gives bleed on crit procs and sigil of earth for another bleed on crit proc, you can be looking at a full 25 stacks every time you do that rotation.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Jekkt.6045:

Sartharina.3542:

Condition Duration makes it easier to spam/stack conditions, Jekkt – It’s the difference between struggling to keep 3 stacks of Bleed on someone, and coasting at 12-15.

condi spam = fast applying of conditions. duration is for stacking. to spam conditions you need stuff like geomancy runes, bleed skills and bleeds on crit. big kitten nal of different conditions is helpful too of course.

usually conditions come from auto attacks and auto attacks will never have long duration conditions. more conditions with a fast applyable short duration is actually better against condi cleanse than few stacks with long duration.

Necro scepter/focus condi build applies 2 stacks of 10.5 second bleeds and 7 seconds of poison every auto attack cycle. Grasping Dead applies 3 stacks at 13.5 seconds, and signet of spite applies 2 stacks of bleed for 18 seconds. Grasping Dead -> Signet of Spite -> AA -> Grasping Dead -> Epidemic: ~20-25 stacks of bleed dropped in an AoE. Combined with the Necro trait that gives bleed on crit procs and sigil of earth for another bleed on crit proc, you can be looking at a full 25 stacks every time you do that rotation.

and a warrior can do a full 100b with 5 stacks of might →8k, then switch to eviscerate for 8k

hit you with two AA’s for safe measure

dead everything that is AFK…
just like getting 25 stacks of bleeding at once from a necro.
On a rotation that you dont cleanse
and sit AFK for.

We really need autobalance measures.

Juggling variables and changing properties can address particular builds, but new imbalanced builds will arise. It’ll take ages to get close to balance with this process of iteration.

But if you set in place autobalance measures, you create a ‘cushion layer’ that prevents excesses, and achieving balance takes much less time, as making builds is no longer about finding gimmicks and excesses, but about efficiency and not wasting skills and stats in a build that will keep hitting the autobalance limiter.

For conditions, example of autobalance measures would be things like:

- Short condition immunity on condition removal. A skill removes bleed, you get 1-2 second bleed immunity. It can be autobalanced even further by linking the invulnerability duration to the number of condition removed and skill recharge. A skill that can be used less often would give longer invulnerabilities, a skill that removes all conditions would give shorter ones.
- Limit not just stacks on a creature, but how many conditions a creature can have on, and how many conditions a creature can maintain, depending on creature rank (players would be the baseline, while epic bosses would be at the end of he spectrum, and have no limits on either).
- Skill charges. Instead a simple recharge, a skill can get a ‘charge’ every X seconds. These charges would appear as numbers in a corner of the skill icon, like stack size in item stacks. Activating the skill takes a charge, and the recharge can be much shorter or even 0. Kind of like having a separate initiative bar for each ‘charging’ skill. For example, a skill could be activated every 2 seconds, and get a charge every 20 seconds. You could either use the skill as soon as you get a charge every 20 seconds, or wait and spam it more when you stack 3 charges. Some traits could increase the number of charges a skill can have, or how often it gains charges. This way you can burst condition removal skills, within a short time, or use them over a longer period of time, without being able to spam them so much that conditions become pointless.

@Cog
In general I tend to think defense oriented conditions are in a better place than offensive ones.

Don’t get me wrong, I get the idea behind an Attrition Battle and I like it when a game supports that sort of gameplay. But I kind of feel like I’m just going through the motions in this game.

In other games I might invest into DoTs because they offer something tactically I can’t get elsewhere. I might use it for securing the kill on running targets, or as a tool to threaten others off of strategic locations, or because there’s some kind of spacial or resource superiority.

In this game, it’s like I build into conditions just for the sake of building into conditions. I don’t have this clear list of pros and cons for doing so, or new options for approaching combat opening up for me, I’m just generally choosing which side of the condi/cleanse dynamic I want to be on.

Sure it sorta’ feels like it’s attrition gameplay and it undoubtedly adds a layer to combat that would otherwise be a bit plain…but it just doesn’t have much a point. So it kind of ends up feeling like lemon scented Power than something truly unique.

MithranArkanere.8957:

But if you set in place autobalance measures, you create a ‘cushion layer’ that prevents excesses, and achieving balance takes much less time, as making builds is no longer about finding gimmicks and excesses, but about efficiency and not wasting skills and stats in a build that will keep hitting the autobalance limiter.

I agree very much, only your examples nerf conditions. Which makes no sense to me, if anything they need a buff as they’re way too weak in most parts of the game, only becoming stronger in a tiny subset of a small subset of the game. And even then only in a game format ANet doesn’t even recognize.

Conditions do have a viable counter’s its called -% condi duration and condi cleanse.

I’ll just top the iceberg, conditions are far to easy to use on most builds (notice the bold).

In wvw its far more noticeable due to condition duration food but in pvp it still has a presence, and this is a problem on multiple fronts. Between condition clearing, auto attack’s applying conditions, and passive condition application with no sign its all too passive. Then you look at condition removal and how some classes cannot stand a chance without certain traits or skills which leads to little build diversity due to the endless fear of being melted by conditions. I’d compare them at face value but it does little good since the list is too big.

There needs to be some restructure to condition builds like less potential stacks but higher DoT for some conditions, shorter durations on some skills, more viable options of condition clear in fair places especially in classes who lack it. Luckily pvp you can put on a generosity or purity sigil at will but again it’s not opening doors to diversity if that’s the solution that people are expected to take.

SB on ranger is imho a good example of a balanced condition set, with situational DoT on the aa, and fairly short cooldowns with short lasting conditions on the other skills. It isn’t overwhelming to go up against unless the ranger has some skill, and even then I don’t run into issues with it all that much. That is how all condition sets should behave, thinking of using the skill instead of just putting it on cooldown because it’s AoE on a short cooldown with a high uptime on it. Auto attacks should amount to a steady pressure of DoT, not become lethal with 8+ seconds of a bleed which many builds can accomplish.

Not saying condition builds should be incredibly difficult to use and amount to almost nothing, but they should require more active thinking than press 11111 2-5 11111.

So what is your definition of hard condition use and easy condition use?

I play condition builds and power builds.

They both involve pushing buttons. There no real difference between pushing 5 11 1 2 on a power build and pushing 1 1 1 2 5 on a condition build. The number 2 or 3 or 4 is not harder to press then pressing 1 and 1 an d 1 and 5. They are just keyboard strokes.

As to 8 seconds of a condition off the auto attack. How is that different then my getting 3k in damage off my auto attack in a power build. Why is the latter “more complicated” or more skill full?

oZii.2864:

So what is your definition of hard condition use and easy condition use?

Skills that have avoidable counters but force you to choose between taking the hit or using up another defense to avoid it(dodge/block/LoS/teleport/etc). Example like ring of fire where you can either stay in the circle making it more difficult to avoid AoE or pass through and get burned. Projectiles like pin down with a visual queue where you can either dodge/block/etc or take it. Icons signifying an incoming effect like sigil of doom or venoms or incendiary ammo (although quite difficult due to 0 cast time). Things that punish you for soaking it up but also make you think on how to avoid it.

Easy condition use are skills that are spammable from either low or no cooldowns (auto attacks, certain weapon skills) or are near impossible to avoid which are basically fire and forget. Not suggesting any 1 skill is op on its own but mix in their easy application and they basically get to kite you while steadily putting out more conditions. The fact that they can take up 2 defensive stats and still dish out heavy DoT seems a bit un settling. Mix in condi duration and things get scary in the right hands.

I’d suggest making conditions stronger (more damage per ticks) but lowering intensity caps (15?) while also lessening their durations and application frequency. Right now I feel like its just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, because as long as you get some variety out there its doing the job. It would make conditions harder to use yes but getting them out there would be far more lethal. However this can’t even be attempted without total restructure of every skill and trait dealing with condition removal and application which imo would be a waste of resources considering the million other things that should be addressed like server lag, trait/skill/tooltip bugs, futile skills/traits, lack of pve rewards, killing zommoros, etc.

babazhook.6805:

I play condition builds and power builds.

They both involve pushing buttons. There no real difference between pushing 5 11 1 2 on a power build and pushing 1 1 1 2 5 on a condition build. The number 2 or 3 or 4 is not harder to press then pressing 1 and 1 an d 1 and 5. They are just keyboard strokes.

As to 8 seconds of a condition off the auto attack. How is that different then my getting 3k in damage off my auto attack in a power build. Why is the latter “more complicated” or more skill full?

Well then you likely die a lot, considering you get 3k auto attack and and press 2-5 at random times. 3k auto attack means you invested a lot into power and critical hits which could mean 2 or 3 stats used up for your damage. Many builds only need condition damage because traits/sigils can be enough to maintain high condition duration so yes, investing so little for 8 second bleeding auto attacks is different from going full glass cannon. You ever press deathly swarm on a necro just because? If so I don’t value your opinion.

NinjaEd.3946:

Many builds only need condition damage because traits/sigils can be enough to maintain high condition duration so yes, investing so little for 8 second bleeding auto attacks is different from going full glass cannon. You ever press deathly swarm on a necro just because? If so I don’t value your opinion.

If you have 8 seconds of 160 damage/sec Bleed, you get 1240 damage spread out over 8 seconds. That’s comparable damage to Necro’s Axe auto, which is potentially considered one of the worst auto-attacks in the game. It gives you time to heal, and it gives you time to clear.

With 2028 condition damage and 80% condition duration, Necro Scepter auto applies a 7.25 second bleed for 1,007 damage. The horror!

NinjaEd.3946:

oZii.2864:

So what is your definition of hard condition use and easy condition use?

Skills that have avoidable counters but force you to choose between taking the hit or using up another defense to avoid it(dodge/block/LoS/teleport/etc). Example like ring of fire where you can either stay in the circle making it more difficult to avoid AoE or pass through and get burned. Projectiles like pin down with a visual queue where you can either dodge/block/etc or take it. Icons signifying an incoming effect like sigil of doom or venoms or incendiary ammo (although quite difficult due to 0 cast time). Things that punish you for soaking it up but also make you think on how to avoid it.

Turns out, the bolded is exactly how I think Conditions are today. What is a heavy condi applicator that doesn’t have a tell?

Thief’s Pistol #1 from Stealth? Channels.
Mesmer’s confusion stack on Scepter? Channels.
Necro’s Enfeebling Blood/Grasping Dead/Locust Swarm? Clear tells.
Necro’s Dark Path? Clear tell.
Warrior’s Impale/Pin Down? Tells.

You can decide which condis to absorb, when to cleanse them, and which to dodge.

Condis punish you for soaking them up, and a player punishes you by riding the line between clearly enough condis to cleanse immediately, and not quite enough to waste your cleanse while you take the damage.

I really think people by and large have this biased stigma against condis that they haven’t sat down and fully considered/investigated. I know I was like that a long while back. Then I started looking into it, and actually felt bad for thinking how I had.

That’s exactly what I’d rather see, dangerous condition applications but with visual counters. This doesn’t mean put a ridiculous channel time or have it move like hammer toss, but I’d rather have done research and known what each of these skills look like and react accordingly then have to eat up spammable conditions that have no real counter. Removing them only resets the intensity stack at best, they’ll just reapply it soon after that and only a handful of builds have any form of cleansing multiple condition bursts.

Thief pistol stealth attack is fairly easy to counter if you watched them enter stealth. First off cnd is highly telegraphed (Except on asurans, sadly) and the bleeds don’t come from 1 bullet it is over five, which is actually visible before they hit. If you see a trail of bullets coming for you, you can usually soak up atleast 1 and dodge (careful timing) which only applies 1 bleed while revealing them wasting the burst. I actually like this skill as an example of balanced condition application, where it has means to counter but packs a big punch if they get it through.

The problem with conditions has, and will always be, the fact that they bypass toughness, protection, and weakness. It’s possible to do very high condition damage while having very high toughness thanks to rabid stats.

This means that power builds are useless against you since toughness reduces power damage significantly, plus you can usually put up protection and/or weakness to reduce power damage further while your condition damage rips through the enemy like butter. The only counter to condition builds are condition builds due to the high toughness/weakness/protection uptime. This is why almost everyone in s/tpvp is playing rabid-condi builds right now.

NinjaEd.3946:

That’s exactly what I’d rather see, dangerous condition applications but with visual counters. This doesn’t mean put a ridiculous channel time or have it move like hammer toss, but I’d rather have done research and known what each of these skills look like and react accordingly then have to eat up spammable conditions that have no real counter. Removing them only resets the intensity stack at best, they’ll just reapply it soon after that and only a handful of builds have any form of cleansing multiple condition bursts.

Thief pistol stealth attack is fairly easy to counter if you watched them enter stealth. First off cnd is highly telegraphed (Except on asurans, sadly) and the bleeds don’t come from 1 bullet it is over five, which is actually visible before they hit. If you see a trail of bullets coming for you, you can usually soak up atleast 1 and dodge (careful timing) which only applies 1 bleed while revealing them wasting the burst. I actually like this skill as an example of balanced condition application, where it has means to counter but packs a big punch if they get it through.

Please list the spammable conditions. If you’re talking about the auto-attack conditions, I already gave you an example of how much damage one does, and I tried to choose the biggest “offender”.

Otherwise, go do the research and find out the animations for each so you can react accordingly. Because you can, right now. There isn’t always one skill that stacks 90% of the conditions that a class can apply, so is that your issue? You don’t want to deal with a lot of abilities that stack a little bit at a time to make the decision a little bit tougher from a dodge perspective while still giving you an option to cleanse?

The most threatening ones have tells. You think CnD, a .5 second animation where you have to keep a keen eye on a dagger-swinging Thief to see when it’s the other arm that pulls back while they are on top of you, is “highly telegraphed”. That should mean that every Necro condi applicator emits a piercing wail and flashes bright lights unique to each animation, because they are infinitely more telegraphed than a subtle left-hand arm wind-up.

You can choose to dodge the skill that applies weakness with bleeds. You can choose to dodge the one that applies cripple with bleeds. You can choose to dodge the one that applies chill with bleeds. You can choose to dodge the one that blinds and transfers condis.

And you don’t have to dodge the auto-spam condis. You really don’t, if you’re attacking them back.

Conditins are OP(on small scale) yet they need coordination and teamwork to work on big group fights, that makes it being balanced ;P

Kharr.5746:

The problem with conditions has, and will always be, the fact that they bypass toughness, protection, and weakness. It’s possible to do very high condition damage while having very high toughness thanks to rabid stats.

This means that power builds are useless against you since toughness reduces power damage significantly, plus you can usually put up protection and/or weakness to reduce power damage further while your condition damage rips through the enemy like butter. The only counter to condition builds are condition builds due to the high toughness/weakness/protection uptime. This is why almost everyone in s/tpvp is playing rabid-condi builds right now.

And? It is possible to do equally or higher damage with high toughness due to knights gear stats.

You don’t dodge the aa because it would be pointless when they just keep using it, that doesn’t mean they don’t stack conditions on top of the other weapon skills in lethal amounts. Necro scepter, thief pistol, warrior sword, these kind of auto attacks that can stack high on their own when spec’ed, and there is nothing you can do if you don’t have good condi clearing because it’s just reapplied in mix with the other conditions.

Like I said, I’d be in favor of stronger DoT with less condition spam than what we have now. On power builds I don’t press 1-5 just to swap to the next weapon set, I combo them and save them for when I really need it. On my condi builds I can quite literally press 1-5 and swap asap and get the same if not better results without being squishy. I’ve ran 3 different condition professions(multiple builds however) and only hold onto 1 because it’s boring playing fire and forget without any risk. I can screw up a lot on a condi build and pull myself together, I can rarely do that with my power builds because of the investment needed to make an impression with one.

Kharr.5746:

The problem with conditions has, and will always be, the fact that they bypass toughness, protection, and weakness. It’s possible to do very high condition damage while having very high toughness thanks to rabid stats.

This means that power builds are useless against you since toughness reduces power damage significantly, plus you can usually put up protection and/or weakness to reduce power damage further while your condition damage rips through the enemy like butter. The only counter to condition builds are condition builds due to the high toughness/weakness/protection uptime. This is why almost everyone in s/tpvp is playing rabid-condi builds right now.

so what you are saying is that you want conditions to take the same damage reduction from weakness/toughness/protection correct?
if thats the case you will need to allow % damage modifiers (sigil of force/traits) to also increase condition damage.

now if you want to nerf conditions so much that the only builds you have are power than congratz you just lowered the build diversity.

Well actually, it sounds sensible. Make conditions able to crit, use Ferocity as a crit-stat, but in return make them obey Toughness and Weakness and so on.

Ofc, to further balance them, conditions now deal all damage instantly, otherwise that’s a bit unfair versus direct attacks which do.

Seems balance to me then.

Third step would be to remove damage types and just make a giant all-caps text “NUMBER” float above the enemy head whenever you push any button.

Brando.1374:

Kharr.5746:

The problem with conditions has, and will always be, the fact that they bypass toughness, protection, and weakness. It’s possible to do very high condition damage while having very high toughness thanks to rabid stats.

This means that power builds are useless against you since toughness reduces power damage significantly, plus you can usually put up protection and/or weakness to reduce power damage further while your condition damage rips through the enemy like butter. The only counter to condition builds are condition builds due to the high toughness/weakness/protection uptime. This is why almost everyone in s/tpvp is playing rabid-condi builds right now.

so what you are saying is that you want conditions to take the same damage reduction from weakness/toughness/protection correct?
if thats the case you will need to allow % damage modifiers (sigil of force/traits) to also increase condition damage.

I don’t agree with Kharr but the fact that we have a 5% direct damage sigil bonus kinda speaks for itself that power needs some bonuses to do anything worth mentioning. I mean look at some of the minor traits, 10% bonus damage for (insert threshold here), 5% there, 1% per (insert condition here) on you or target. You don’t see even 1% more condition damage anywhere in traits, because condi damage alone covers all that mess. The few traits that modify condition damage at all are GM traits and only affect 1 condition. There are traits that however affect condition duration which almost fills this role but not quite.

Either way, you know something is underwhelming when they have huge damage modifiers that are pretty much always active.

NinjaEd.3946:

Brando.1374:

Kharr.5746:

The problem with conditions has, and will always be, the fact that they bypass toughness, protection, and weakness. It’s possible to do very high condition damage while having very high toughness thanks to rabid stats.

This means that power builds are useless against you since toughness reduces power damage significantly, plus you can usually put up protection and/or weakness to reduce power damage further while your condition damage rips through the enemy like butter. The only counter to condition builds are condition builds due to the high toughness/weakness/protection uptime. This is why almost everyone in s/tpvp is playing rabid-condi builds right now.

so what you are saying is that you want conditions to take the same damage reduction from weakness/toughness/protection correct?
if thats the case you will need to allow % damage modifiers (sigil of force/traits) to also increase condition damage.

I don’t agree with Kharr but the fact that we have a 5% direct damage sigil bonus kinda speaks for itself that power needs some bonuses to do anything worth mentioning. I mean look at some of the minor traits, 10% bonus damage for (insert threshold here), 5% there, 1% per (insert condition here) on you or target. You don’t see even 1% more condition damage anywhere in traits, because condi damage alone covers all that mess. The few traits that modify condition damage at all are GM traits and only affect 1 condition. There are traits that however affect condition duration which almost fills this role but not quite.

Either way, you know something is underwhelming when they have huge damage modifiers that are pretty much always active.

condition damage can be mitigated through -% condi duration and learning when to cleanse/soak conditions.

if needed I can post 2 clips of 2 different warriors I have faced. One has no idea what to do and sounds like most of the people who complain or want to nerf conditions. the other is build to withstand damage and deal a good amount while fending off conditions.

NinjaEd.3946:

You don’t dodge the aa because it would be pointless when they just keep using it, that doesn’t mean they don’t stack conditions on *top of the other weapon skills in lethal amounts. Necro scepter, thief pistol, warrior sword, these kind of auto attacks that can stack high on their own when spec’ed, and there is nothing you can do if you don’t have good condi clearing because it’s just reapplied in mix with the other conditions. *

Like I said, I’d be in favor of stronger DoT with less condition spam than what we have now. On power builds I don’t press 1-5 just to swap to the next weapon set, I combo them and save them for when I really need it. On my condi builds I can quite literally press 1-5 and swap asap and get the same if not better results without being squishy. I’ve ran 3 different condition professions(multiple builds however) and only hold onto 1 because it’s boring playing fire and forget without any risk. I can screw up a lot on a condi build and pull myself together, I can rarely do that with my power builds because of the investment needed to make an impression with one.

The bolded part is where I think you’re making a really key error in evaluating condi damage, and I think it’s a very common one. Getting hit by a Necro Scepter auto bleed is worth 1000 damage over 7.25 seconds whether you have 0 bleed stacks currently or 10.

How much they stack actually doesn’t matter. Think of it like “Direct Damage after X seconds”. You getting hit by 9 scepter autos over an 8 second time-frame (yes each has a .5 second cast time, but each also has aftercast) isn’t “6 stacks of bleeding from an auto-attack, how imba”, it’s “6000 damage from bleeds, and about 4500 damage from poison, resulting in 10500 total damage after another 7.25 seconds”, which is 10500 damage over a 15 second time-frame.

This truly sounds like unbearable, broken pressure to you? “On top of the other abilities”, it’s just a little bit more pressure while their cooldowns are still out. If anything, what you are complaining about is on-hit/on-crit condition application procs, but then your actual beef is with an entirely different system. Even I take issue with the current rune/sigil system.

Also, conditions get little benefits all over the trait lines. What do you think “burning on hit”, “bleed on crit”, “inc bleed duration”, “scepter conditions last Y% longer”, “bleeds last X% longer”, “shatters apply bleeding”, “Ability X applies bleeding”, “Fear now ticks damage” are for? Also, there’s a 5% damage increase in Sigil of Force, and there’s a 6% condition damage increase in Sigil of Bursting. There’s also a 10% increased condition duration for all conditions in Sigil of Malice.

I feel like I’ve written this post before. Have you made these same arguments a while back? Someone else must have, because it seems like it’s being recycled.

Also, the reason your condition builds work by going through the abilities is two-fold:

1. Your conditions are often spread across several abilities, so you have to go through them in order to keep the pressure on. You feel like you have to time Power abilities because you probably focus a rotation around some sort of burst chain whose initiation can be dodged.

2. People are absolutely terrible at watching for and managing conditions that have been applied to them. Contrarily, sometimes someone can randomly dodge and happen to avoid the start of a burst sequence, and learning direct damage tells seems to come more naturally than condition damage tells.

@Brando: I’d like to see those videos.

Cogbyrn.7283:

@Brando: I’d like to see those videos.

Vid 1 – http://www.twitch.tv/xxkakarot/c/3439319
He came up to me, I didnt go looking to fight him. as you can see he didnt even try to clear any conditions or bother to run -% duration food when you can clearly see I have +% duration food on. I pretty much facerolled him.

Vid 2 – http://www.twitch.tv/xxkakarot/c/4031535
I saw this guy having some 1vX fights and lost but lasted for a long time so I waited for him to come back out to give him a try.
My conditions did not last anywhere near their full duration and I was not able to get many stacks on him at one time. I dont think his hp went below 50%.
(before the you wasted skills on his shield block, I have unblockable marks and ds 2 is unblockable.)

NinjaEd.3946:

That’s exactly what I’d rather see, dangerous condition applications but with visual counters. This doesn’t mean put a ridiculous channel time or have it move like hammer toss, but I’d rather have done research and known what each of these skills look like and react accordingly then have to eat up spammable conditions that have no real counter. Removing them only resets the intensity stack at best, they’ll just reapply it soon after that and only a handful of builds have any form of cleansing multiple condition bursts.

Thief pistol stealth attack is fairly easy to counter if you watched them enter stealth. First off cnd is highly telegraphed (Except on asurans, sadly) and the bleeds don’t come from 1 bullet it is over five, which is actually visible before they hit. If you see a trail of bullets coming for you, you can usually soak up atleast 1 and dodge (careful timing) which only applies 1 bleed while revealing them wasting the burst. I actually like this skill as an example of balanced condition application, where it has means to counter but packs a big punch if they get it through.

This sounds like you want conditions to be direct damage, or to never be hit by a condition ever.

Brando.1374:

Cogbyrn.7283:

@Brando: I’d like to see those videos.

Vid 1 – http://www.twitch.tv/xxkakarot/c/3439319
He came up to me, I didnt go looking to fight him. as you can see he didnt even try to clear any conditions or bother to run -% duration food when you can clearly see I have +% duration food on. I pretty much facerolled him.

Vid 2 – http://www.twitch.tv/xxkakarot/c/4031535
I saw this guy having some 1vX fights and lost but lasted for a long time so I waited for him to come back out to give him a try.
My conditions did not last anywhere near their full duration and I was not able to get many stacks on him at one time. I dont think his hp went below 50%.
(before the you wasted skills on his shield block, I have unblockable marks and ds 2 is unblockable.)

Yep, that’s about right. It’s amazing what some preparation and know-how will do, even against the dreaded “condi meta”.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Wall of text.

Ok, don’t see anything bolded but I’ll bite.

Direct damage is done instantly, you can soften it with weakness, protection, toughness, even vitality. Many high power attacks like whirling wrath, eviscerate, SoW, jump shot, etc are highly telegraphed, and among that list many skills have methods to counter them or waste the effort like forcing a frontstab or moving past the target interrupting a channel, etc. Power builds need power, precision, and ferocity in some various amounts (although ferocity is less relevant since the change) to do anything. Tied to that, there are direct damage modifiers and trait lines having little to no dual applications of offense and defense, which is fine. Bottom line, you have to pump yourself up to put out the nasty hits, and you can only go so far before you’re too squishy to even bother with targeting.

Conditions aren’t some rock you try to lift over your shoulders, their applications are mostly straight forward and easy to get out. Throw down this AoE field, hit them with a few stacks and laugh at their armor rating. Mix in multiple sources of DoT and they will have to use some condition clear because it will bring you down quick if you don’t. You can pump defensive trait lines, get vitality or toughness or healing power because even with a short condition duration, viable condition builds have more than enough variety to bring the pain. Bottom line, I don’t have to plan some combo off or spike anyone, I just hit them with a condition and hop around while they chase me.

Those “conditions on hit/crit/skill” effects don’t last all that long, because it would be insanely broken if on crit I was getting anything more than 4 second bleeds. Burn on (critical) hit only comes from offensive trait lines, which means less defense which is fine as far as what bothers me.

As for the scepter argument, that’s just an auto attack doing that, and nothing else. Link me a scepter condi necro and list off the rotation they can easily get through, then list your numbers. I can easily list you a p/d thief build with or w/o condi duration food and show how ridiculously easy it is to put out damage and still stay at a safe distance. Not sure you’ve fought or used a condi build lately to know how much safer you can play with one and still get kills.

And expecting people to, in the middle of an ambush select your target and determine what food they have just to put on the opposite food is asinine. This isn’t food wars 2, don’t use that as an argument for balance. Also food has no place in pvp, which is another place that has problems with condi spam. Condi spam is basically what I’ve been saying this whole time, fire and forget. I don’t need to worry about doing too little damage with conditions because it’s easy enough to put a few stacks and start ticking their life away. Most people aren’t swimming in condition removal, and you can’t evade a “tick”.

@ Brando, All that video showed was how simple warriors are (speaking of the second video). Notice #2 warrior was able to cc spam you, he clearly knew how bad necro stun breakers are and used it to his advantage to wiggle you down. I don’t think you were playing glassy, so it took awhile but when you are a sitting duck there ain’t much to it. Warrior #1 was also GS hammer, you really going to use him as an example?

NinjaEd.3946:

Also food has no place in pvp, which is another place that has problems with condi spam.

Well not really—condition builds have seen some nerfs and PvPers have in general figured out how to deal with them. That’s not to say there aren’t some unfortunate builds still remaining: mace/sword-longbow warrior is ridiculously strong in duels, for example. Turret engineers sometimes use conditions, and they are unfortunately pretty effective in solo arenas and pug team arenas atm.

But in standard team or solo arenas, things like scepter/dagger-staff condimancer have been figured out. They don’t wreck people any more; in fact, they’re barely good enough to compete.

I haven’t played much WvW recently so maybe p/d thieves and PU mesmers are still running rampant there. That’s more a flaw with open-world PvP than conditions, though. You could cut condition damage in half and those builds would still wreck new players in WvW because they can’t be pinned down.

NevirSayDie.6235:

NinjaEd.3946:

Also food has no place in pvp, which is another place that has problems with condi spam.

Well not really—condition builds have seen some nerfs and PvPers have in general figured out how to deal with them. That’s not to say there aren’t some unfortunate builds still remaining: mace/sword-longbow warrior is ridiculously strong in duels, for example. Turret engineers sometimes use conditions, and they are an unfortunate plague on solo arena and pug team arenas atm.

But in standard team or solo arenas, things like scepter/dagger-staff condimancer have been figured out. They don’t wreck people any more; in fact, they’re barely good enough to compete.

I haven’t played much WvW recently so maybe p/d thieves and PU mesmers are still running rampant there. That’s more a flaw with open-world PvP than conditions, though. You could cut condition damage in half and those builds would still wreck new players in WvW because they can’t be pinned down.

In tpvp whether its power or condition (although power tends to work better in groups due to condi cap), all I see is AoE spam. I watched 1.5hours of the EU ToL and probably an hour of the NA ToL and was not impressed. First off the spectators were kittens, always monitoring the hambow or altruistic guardian and rarely ever panning to the others, and secondly it was just a pile up at mid over and over. People weren’t doing side objectives, they weren’t back capping, it was just a duel at mid. If this is how tourny’s were supposed to play out then just make death match and be done with it.

I don’t roam nearly as much as pvp, but I still have gone out there and seen a huge difference between playing a power and condi spec as well as fighting against power and/or condi spec’s. Conditions were far more lethal because I couldn’t burst them down (built more defense) and on mine I was never near risk unless it was a zerg incoming in which I would Chain CnD off ambient creatures and gtfo. In pvp I can deal with condition builds on most of my builds but there are a few who put them out way to easily and frequently that even timing my condi removal does nothing. Often I just move to another objective because it’s a waste of my time.