Guild Wars 2

Even if you spec all out for condition damage, use every toughness and condition damage boost available (rabid amulet + undead runes) Diamond Skin still only gives 190 condition damage. Even if it scaled with the few situational toughness boosts in earth (which it doesn’t!) it would only give around 210 condition damage for a few seconds before falling back to 190.

190 condition damage is nowhere near worthy of a grandmaster trait.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQBIAY8QjRIB-TgAAzCpIaS1krJTTymsNB

Yeah, it needs an extra effect. Maybe transfer a condition to nearby foe when hit (15s cd)?

Yeah I just experimented with a sort of tanky earth condition build, and its kinda crappy. Bleed build on warrior is vastly superior in every way even in spvp and that alone should say just how bad it is on ele if a warrior bleed spec can outdo it there.

So basically it’s a Grandmaster trait that’s as strong as a signet passive, if you spec for it. Lame.

Wow, this is absolutely horrid. Thank you for doing the math.

Just be glad you didn’t waste gold on it thinking it would be good to do a condition spec because of this like I did. Warrior condition build with rife/bow can drop people literally 3 times faster than condition ele. You would think it would be the other way around because on paper our conditions have some insane numbers. Doesn’t work that way in actual combat though.

Nikkinella.8254:

Just be glad you didn’t waste gold on it thinking it would be good to do a condition spec because of this like I did. Warrior condition build with rife/bow can drop people literally 3 times faster than condition ele. You would think it would be the other way around because on paper our conditions have some insane numbers. Doesn’t work that way in actual combat though.

(tl;dr at the end)

Maybe not in any form of pvp (ele doesn’t have many cover conditions to protect the bleeds from removal) but the numbers -are- amazing for a condi build in PvE.

Consider this build

Numbers:
1850 condition damage (before might or kill stacks) (Bleed: 135/sec, Burn: 787/sec, Poison: 270/sec) (assume the extra 13 can be covered by infusions in a min-maxed setup if Diamond Skin really doesn’t scale with the earth adept minor)
100% sustainable bleed stacks: 24 on a large 5 target AoE (3240 dps total; ramp time is 20 seconds to max bleeds)
~90% sustainable burning on a single target while in earth, or 80% on 5 targets while in fire (attuning to fire sacrifices 3-6 seconds of bleed stacking, generally one Eruption cast, which can be worth more than gaining AoE burning is worth)
28.5 seconds of AoE poison per minute, with a 100% projectile finisher on the autoattack stacking 1.6 seconds more on a single target per shot (assume 2 autoattacks every 6 seconds = 5 projectile finishers = 8 seconds) = 36 seconds on one target total. (Poison damage is negligible in PvE but Radiation Field can easily be fit into the rotation – it’s not a huge loss for non-asura to not have this)

A standard conditionmancer has slightly higher condition damage, but can’t maintain above 12-15 bleed stacks. The elementalist in this case actually has better base numbers due to being able to maintain high stacks (and doesn’t need a utility slot to keep all the bleeds AoE, or a trait slot to inflict burning at all). A bleed-focused warrior is only just faster at stacking bleeds, doesn’t have diamond skin and only hits 3 targets at melee range, or one target (with linear pierce if traited at range) – and the warrior sucks in damage compared to zerker warriors anyways in PvE.

In a single target situation, any other weapon set will be able to reach the bleed cap as well (and faster to boot – around 14 seconds for scepter and 18 for dagger), though mainhand dagger and scepter both have to sacrifice more condition damage for Giver’s stats to be able to maintain the bleed cap. Should be noted that condi eles are exceptionally squishy due to not having room to take water and arcana to 30, and also because leaving earth attunement is basically not viable for the build. (Condi ele really, really wants to have a decent bleed capability in another attunement; a good candidate would be something like a trait to make the ice-themed attacks in water attunement apply significant bleeds

Ironically, Isaiah Cartwright thinks mono-attunement builds shouldn’t be viable but it’s the optimal way to play condi ele in PvE right now, and will be as long as ele can’t get bleeding outside of earth attunement. The core weakness of the condi build is twofold; firstly, leaving earth attunement massively reduces DPM as the stacks drop off and can’t be reapplied for up to 15 seconds depending on build; secondly, that the only damaging condition ele can stack outside of earth is plenty available through traits and utilities, meaning attuning to fire doesn’t really gain burning. Combined, this means that the condi build gains nothing from leaving earth attunement – the minor healing from water skills won’t keep you alive longer than an extra 15 seconds of maintaining bleed stacks will shorten a fight by, the damage of fire and air skills is negligible without power.

tl;dr: Condi ele build is a PvE build. This trait works just fine in PvE (though the damage boost isn’t comparable to, say, the flat +10% damage traits). Mono-earth condi ele is one of the stronger PvE condition builds in the game due to large AoE, high stacking capability and having the highest potential for condition damage in the game thanks to Diamond Skin. The tradeoff for this is being exceptionally squishy.

I would say its still performs better than Performance Enhancement or Armored Attack, which are both grandmaster minor traits. Based on the previous % of x to y traits this one was a step up from others.

Not only is the trait really bad for a grandmaster, the root of the problem is that ele condition builds will pretty much never be viable unless they change a LOT of things around. We can only bleed in earth, and only burn in fire (signet aside) and that are the only 2 damage conditions we have. We have no spare conditions to blanket those with so when someone cleanses our conditions, 99% they’ll cleanse both burning and bleeding. And then we stand there, having used our fire and earth attunements, not being able to put any condition up for the next 10 seconds. It’s ridiculous.

Lately I’ve been running with a Conditimentalist build. This build calculator hasn’t been updated in a while so things like Signets and Traits are out of date (missing 90 Toughness and 20% bleed duration).

1. Diamond Skin is 100% worthless and you should never, ever go with it. The 10% additional condition damage is vastly outpaced by the passives maintained with Written in Stone. I honestly can’t even imagine what they could add here that would be better than maintaining 190 Toughness, Condition Removal 1/10s, and 25% run speed.

2. Signets are !@#$ing amazing. It’s a lot of passive gains you always keep on you that play into every part of a Condition build. One of the biggest problems playing as a Staff Elementalist or even a S/D Elementalist is a lot of our damage is avoidable because the lines that deal this ground based AOE have no way of stopping people for any length of time (chill, snare, immobilize, etc).

Signet of Earth comes with a massive 5 second Immobilize (4s without food). That’s enough to land anything you want in the game. Signet of Water also has around a 7 second Chill (6s without food). That’s a lot of Chill to instantly put on an opponent and often times can be used to catch up or use it to get them to use their condition clear before you use Signet of Earth. Signet of Air is awesome as a Stun Break and it was one of the biggest things lacking pre-patch. All of these are on short 30 second cool downs giving you a lot of CC on demand.

3. The whole Burning/Bleed thing isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. A lot of this has to deal with Attunement management and the weapon you use. All our sources of Bleed and Burn are fairly spammable in Fire or Earth so if they end up removing one chances are you’re still in the other to keep reapplying them. There’s no condition management in the game that can keep up with you spamming a bleed every half second with Stone Shards. Also really don’t undervalue the additional conditions we get in the form of Blind, Chill or Immobilize. When most people are Chilled their first instinct is to break that Chill and they will look to use their condition removal to break it (which again even if they do most condition removal tools are on similar cool downs to our Signets).

4. The biggest argument against Condition based builds is that direct damage oriented builds apply their damage instantly rather than having to wait to do their full damage. I can’t really argue against that point but I would point out that different builds excel at different things. For one I built in some Power into my build so I can get the full use out of things like the Dragon’s Tooth Fire combo (which is easy to land with Signet of Earth). For two I have a much easier time of things with stealth rogues because Condition damage keeps ticking without a target. I would also argue that raw damage have an advantage if only because their damage isn’t capped where as Conditions are debuffs. If you got a super weak Burn on the target from another source you end up having to wait till yours applies real damage. Bleeds stacks are a pain when another Condition player is in your group in PvE. Those are just real issues with a Condition based spec for any character type.

Um Signet of Earth immobilzes for 3 seconds, and water chills for 4. I have no idea where you get these numbers from.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Um Signet of Earth immobilzes for 3 seconds, and water chills for 4. I have no idea where you get these numbers from.

Condition duration obviously.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Um Signet of Earth immobilzes for 3 seconds, and water chills for 4. I have no idea where you get these numbers from.

I got them from in game.

You should try it sometime.

Kodiak.3281:

Aether McLoud.1975:

Um Signet of Earth immobilzes for 3 seconds, and water chills for 4. I have no idea where you get these numbers from.

I got them from in game.

You should try it sometime.

That’s not achievable in pvp.

Aether McLoud.1975:

That’s not achievable in pvp.

Wait…wait…wait…Lemme get this straight. Are you saying some builds and some ways to play a character excel in certain areas in the game and not others? Gasp and or shocked expression.

More over, as I commented in the post without food the base durations are 4s and 6s without Food. This is done in PvP with my build (30/0/30/10/0) and 2/6 Superior Lyssa and 4/6 Superior Nightmare for +50% duration.

I’d go in and record videos of me in SPvP and how I do but since I have little interest in SPvP I likely will never get into Tournament and hot join is usually considered “meaningless” for most people. Lets just say from the few experiences I have had, a 4s Immobilize or 6s Chill is pretty kitten strong.

I’m saying everything is viable in pve. Also using 30 fire in pvp isn’t viable. at. all. Not even 10 fire is. So you will never have more than 3.3 seconds immobilize in PVP. And that’s what should be balanced around. Not some mode where your level and equipment counts more than your build or skill.

Aether McLoud.1975:

I’m saying everything is viable in pve. Also using 30 fire in pvp isn’t viable. at. all. Not even 10 fire is. So you will never have more than 3.3 seconds immobilize in PVP. And that’s what should be balanced around. Not some mode where your level and equipment counts more than your build or skill.

I feel sad for you and your limited view point.

What a miserable experience you must have in this game.

Kodiak.3281:

Aether McLoud.1975:

I’m saying everything is viable in pve. Also using 30 fire in pvp isn’t viable. at. all. Not even 10 fire is. So you will never have more than 3.3 seconds immobilize in PVP. And that’s what should be balanced around. Not some mode where your level and equipment counts more than your build or skill.

I feel sad for you and your limited view point.

What a miserable experience you must have in this game.

I feel sad for your non-existent pvp skills.
What a miserable experience you must have in this game.

Aether McLoud.1975:

I feel sad for your non-existent pvp skills.
What a miserable experience you must have in this game.

So it’s your assertion that I have no PvP skills yet I’m able to pull it off and make it work.

What does that say about you who are coming here to the forums complaining about how it doesn’t work?

:o

Kodiak, while I do not agree with Aether’s attitude, he (or she) has a point.

In pve, any build (or most builds) are possible because the stats on armor, accessories, and equipment makes up the difference. So, while you’ve found a build that works in that environment, I’m afraid it is nothing to be proud of or boast about.

PvE is an environment where the skill floor is set really low. And really, that says more about the content than it does the players.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Kodiak.3281:

Aether McLoud.1975:

I’m saying everything is viable in pve. Also using 30 fire in pvp isn’t viable. at. all. Not even 10 fire is. So you will never have more than 3.3 seconds immobilize in PVP. And that’s what should be balanced around. Not some mode where your level and equipment counts more than your build or skill.

I feel sad for you and your limited view point.

What a miserable experience you must have in this game.

I feel sad for your non-existent pvp skills.
What a miserable experience you must have in this game.

^Well eles are totally non viable since being nerfed into the “ground” in pvp. Essentially every elementalist should be having a miserable experience.

:^ T
/sarcasm

Asurmir.7956:

Kodiak, while I do not agree with Aether’s attitude, he (or she) has a point.

In pve, any build (or most builds) are possible because the stats on armor, accessories, and equipment makes up the difference. So, while you’ve found a build that works in that environment, I’m afraid it is nothing to be proud of or boast about.

PvE is an environment where the skill floor is set really low. And really, that says more about the content than it does the players.

Well let me start out by saying no one around here ever specifies anything. They never mention PvP, WvW or PvE or even the various sub categories of each. A lot of people just start spouting off an opinion but never preface it that they’re talking about. Then a few posts later they then say they’re talking about WvW. Then a few posts later they then say they’re specifically talking only about GvG WvW and not Zerg WvW or Solo Roam WvW.

Actually from a PvE perspective conditions are extremely bad because any kind of group activity basically renders them useless. I mean I look at my Mesmer, Engineer or Necromancer all of which regardless of spec generates a stupid amount of conditions whether I want them (such as with the Necro) to or not (such as with the Mesmer). My Mesmer can take up 10/25 bleed slots with zero condition damage from Sharper Images alone. This speaks nothing of Burning and how a Guardian just passively makes everyone burn stuff which without Condition damage is just wasting the time of the people who do have good burn damage. The only saving grace of my build from this perspective is that if there are a lot of Condition appliers in the group I can fall back on my high amount of Power.

Personally I primarily play WvW. I play in Zerg WvW and Solo Roam WvW. I mostly speak from those perspectives. In these scenarios I have zero issues with my build either in terms of damage or survivability.

I pretty much almost never do SPvP because I am not a fan of battlegrounds. I think I have done a grand total of three PvP matches on my current Elementalist and I did a bunch when the game came out on my old elementalist back in beginning of the game as a Staff/EA Elementalist. That said, I don’t think my build is entirely terrible:

I don’t exactly just fall over dead and I certainly am not useless or get zero kills. This is because I use the Signets to my advantage to land our hard hitting attacks that most people assume are useless since they are ground targeted. I also abuse the hell out of Condition duration/damage and get some pretty good results.

Again, I’m not the one complaining about having issues. All in all my experience is pretty good.

If you’re going to talk about a build, please talk about the capabilities of the base build or at least make it clear food buffs are essential. Counting food buffs without specifying food buffs is kind of misleading. The main reason being you can’t use food buffs everywhere.

Navzar.2938:

If you’re going to talk about a build, please talk about the capabilities of the base build or at least make it clear food buffs are essential. Counting food buffs without specifying food buffs is kind of misleading. The main reason being you can’t use food buffs everywhere.

Kodiak.3281:

Signet of Earth comes with a massive 5 second Immobilize (4s without food). That’s enough to land anything you want in the game. Signet of Water also has around a 7 second Chill (6s without food). That’s a lot of Chill to instantly put on an opponent and often times can be used to catch up or use it to get them to use their condition clear before you use Signet of Earth. Signet of Air is awesome as a Stun Break and it was one of the biggest things lacking pre-patch. All of these are on short 30 second cool downs giving you a lot of CC on demand.

You should probably actually read what people write before attempting to correct them.

Wow thats just bad 190 condition damage translates to Bleeds deal 9 more damage per tick and Fire burns for 47 more per second. Really? For a Grandmaster trait? http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_Damage
Lol then why not give warriors a trait " gain 9 more bleed damage when wearing ALL toughness gear" ? It just soo bad kitten , Anet can’t leave the ele’s to get all the good traits lol

Really I think a deeper problem with this trait is that it doesn’t alter how you play that much, and doesn’t really make many choices for the player. It just encourages you to stack toughness, which the option of stacking more or less of it. Compare it to Powerful Aura, which adds the goal of applying Auras to your teammates, while making you choose which auras to bring and when to share them. Or to Written In Stone, which would encourage the use of signets but still requires you to choose which ones you bring.

I mean, maybe it’s underpowered, but does anyone else find it boring?

I fail to see who thought 10% is a GM trait.

This is how a GM trait should look like:

15% of your toughness is converted to Cond. Damage
20% of your toughness is converted to Vitality

GM traits should have noticeable effect in the way you play other than just number crunching here and there. Like Evasive Arcana, or Fresh Air. IMO, these traits that just convert <insert number here>% of <insert stat here> to <insert another stat here> is bad, boring, and unimaginative.

My idea of Diamond skin is something like the ones already mentioned in that there is a new effect or skill that happens, like, transfer condition to enemy or cast Obsidian Flesh for 1 or 2 seconds when hit while channeling a spell or using a particular type of skill. Right now, this new trait name is awesome, but the effect is meh. Especially compared to other minor or lower traits of other professions.

Be creative guys. Please. You’re close to making all ele traits decent. Arcana and Water and Air traits are IMO in the right spots except for some few which are buggy or still lackluster. Earth and Fire, still not as appealing as the other three. Add creativity to synergy! I still have faith in you!

Nikkinella.8254:

Just be glad you didn’t waste gold on it thinking it would be good to do a condition spec because of this like I did. Warrior condition build with rife/bow can drop people literally 3 times faster than condition ele. You would think it would be the other way around because on paper our conditions have some insane numbers. Doesn’t work that way in actual combat though.

You couldn’t do a simple calculation of 1900 × 0.1 before spending all that gold? >_>

Bumping. Nobody cares that this GM trait isn’t worth it?

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Bumping. Nobody cares that this GM trait isn’t worth it?

Yes, but the topic is pretty much settled.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Bumping. Nobody cares that this GM trait isn’t worth it?

We all agree it’s bad.

We have no power to do anything about it. It took them over 10 months to address the initial set of bad traits. The immediate future isn’t exactly hopeful.

tried it out in pvp…. definately not worth it. Our conditions just don’t do as much damage. they last long but that’s about it.

cheshirefox.7026:

i proposed this in another thread {attachment}
yes, i care very much that elementalists are  g i mp e d   horribly
in more than one area

That’s a pretty good change to the line, I approve.

Although the stoneflesh minor would still probably keep a while attuned to earth mechanic since lingering elements exists.

Oh and if I had to choose anything, I would have stolen a page out of the recent Necromancer changes and gone with:

“Toxic Earth: 100% chance on Critical Strike to inflict Poison for 4 seconds.”

This would play into things like Signet of Fire’s Precision as well as Rabid gear and possibly (for my build) Persisting Flames (for the Fury).

Fundamentally, condition Ele is broken because of the long attunement switching timer – if you need to switch out of Earth/Fire, you can’t do any appreciable damage for at least 9 seconds – and that’s if you have 30 arcane, which offers little to a condition build.

Attunement times need to come down for Ele. You shouldn’t need 20+ point in arcane just to play the class fluidly.

All would be so good if you didnt need 30 arcana for everything..When will they see this?

mjharrison.3209:

Fundamentally, condition Ele is broken because of the long attunement switching timer – if you need to switch out of Earth/Fire, you can’t do any appreciable damage for at least 9 seconds – and that’s if you have 30 arcane, which offers little to a condition build.

Attunement times need to come down for Ele. You shouldn’t need 20+ point in arcane just to play the class fluidly.

If you’re going to talk fundamentals any Condition based spec is pretty bad by virtue of game design. Conditions basically have everything working against them.

In PvE Conditions can be stacked at maximum for 25 for bleeds or duration for other effects. This largely means your damage is going to have to wait in line to be done if at all. On my Mesmer I passively apply 10+ bleeds without wanting to (minor trait) with 0 condition damage. That means any class that seriously wants to apply them are unable to because even more powerful bleeds won’t overwrite weaker ones. In addition for stacking duration conditions a weaker burn/poison is also not prioritized lower. Even if they were prioritized based on effect power, if two people intentionally apply a high damage burn as part of their damage only one will take effect meaning by game design one person will always be doing lower damage.

In PvP (and/or WvW) things are even more grim because of the number of counters. The huge advantage raw damage has over condition damage in PvP is you can’t quickly or easily “erase” raw damage where as all classes have a wide variety of options to remove condition based damage. There is also an entire stat (-Condition Duration) dedicated to countering condition durations which forces you into +Condition Duration options to give you base durations in the best case scenarios. Except the base duration on many conditions is so pitifully small because they were balanced around the idea you could increase said condition duration. Also with the stacking nature of Bleed it’s extremely difficult to “cover” them as the last condition applied because Bleed was designed to be stacked and is available on most spam abilities.

This is not to say Condi specs are impossible to pull off, have fun with or even that they can’t excel. It’s just the very way the game is designed is set against them (regardless of class) which makes them and abilities like this seem so lackluster.

At least it won’t tempt me to waste more than 10 points in earth.

Agreed though, it is absolutely horrendous for a class that is terrible with condition builds to begin with. Convert 50% and I would still only consider it.

Jabberwock.9014:

At least it won’t tempt me to waste more than 10 points in earth.

Agreed though, it is absolutely horrendous for a class that is terrible with condition builds to begin with. Convert 50% and I would still only consider it.

Yeah, I feel the same way. Condi ele is THAT bad of an option IMO because of reasons stated in other posts.

Instead of passive bonuses on traits which should be what minors should be, they should up the ante on making unique circumstantial traits that change the way you play like I’ve mentioned before in my earlier posts. These % stat bonuses and passive procs are pretty lame and are just somehow counter-intuitive to the very fluid and dynamic combat GW2 has. It’s sad.

Dingle.2743:

Nikkinella.8254:

Just be glad you didn’t waste gold on it thinking it would be good to do a condition spec because of this like I did. Warrior condition build with rife/bow can drop people literally 3 times faster than condition ele. You would think it would be the other way around because on paper our conditions have some insane numbers. Doesn’t work that way in actual combat though.

(tl;dr at the end)

Maybe not in any form of pvp (ele doesn’t have many cover conditions to protect the bleeds from removal) but the numbers -are- amazing for a condi build in PvE.

Consider this build

Numbers:
1850 condition damage (before might or kill stacks) (Bleed: 135/sec, Burn: 787/sec, Poison: 270/sec) (assume the extra 13 can be covered by infusions in a min-maxed setup if Diamond Skin really doesn’t scale with the earth adept minor)
100% sustainable bleed stacks: 24 on a large 5 target AoE (3240 dps total; ramp time is 20 seconds to max bleeds)
~90% sustainable burning on a single target while in earth, or 80% on 5 targets while in fire (attuning to fire sacrifices 3-6 seconds of bleed stacking, generally one Eruption cast, which can be worth more than gaining AoE burning is worth)
28.5 seconds of AoE poison per minute, with a 100% projectile finisher on the autoattack stacking 1.6 seconds more on a single target per shot (assume 2 autoattacks every 6 seconds = 5 projectile finishers = 8 seconds) = 36 seconds on one target total. (Poison damage is negligible in PvE but Radiation Field can easily be fit into the rotation – it’s not a huge loss for non-asura to not have this)

A standard conditionmancer has slightly higher condition damage, but can’t maintain above 12-15 bleed stacks. The elementalist in this case actually has better base numbers due to being able to maintain high stacks (and doesn’t need a utility slot to keep all the bleeds AoE, or a trait slot to inflict burning at all). A bleed-focused warrior is only just faster at stacking bleeds, doesn’t have diamond skin and only hits 3 targets at melee range, or one target (with linear pierce if traited at range) – and the warrior sucks in damage compared to zerker warriors anyways in PvE.

In a single target situation, any other weapon set will be able to reach the bleed cap as well (and faster to boot – around 14 seconds for scepter and 18 for dagger), though mainhand dagger and scepter both have to sacrifice more condition damage for Giver’s stats to be able to maintain the bleed cap. Should be noted that condi eles are exceptionally squishy due to not having room to take water and arcana to 30, and also because leaving earth attunement is basically not viable for the build. (Condi ele really, really wants to have a decent bleed capability in another attunement; a good candidate would be something like a trait to make the ice-themed attacks in water attunement apply significant bleeds

Ironically, Isaiah Cartwright thinks mono-attunement builds shouldn’t be viable but it’s the optimal way to play condi ele in PvE right now, and will be as long as ele can’t get bleeding outside of earth attunement. The core weakness of the condi build is twofold; firstly, leaving earth attunement massively reduces DPM as the stacks drop off and can’t be reapplied for up to 15 seconds depending on build; secondly, that the only damaging condition ele can stack outside of earth is plenty available through traits and utilities, meaning attuning to fire doesn’t really gain burning. Combined, this means that the condi build gains nothing from leaving earth attunement – the minor healing from water skills won’t keep you alive longer than an extra 15 seconds of maintaining bleed stacks will shorten a fight by, the damage of fire and air skills is negligible without power.

tl;dr: Condi ele build is a PvE build. This trait works just fine in PvE (though the damage boost isn’t comparable to, say, the flat +10% damage traits). Mono-earth condi ele is one of the stronger PvE condition builds in the game due to large AoE, high stacking capability and having the highest potential for condition damage in the game thanks to Diamond Skin. The tradeoff for this is being exceptionally squishy.

Condi build is never viable in PvE, what are you smoking.

Berserker will always be better than any condi build even if condi caps were removed.

They just need to add more high defense low hp mobs I guess? At least that way they’d be viable in some areas, like dungeons with those sort of creatures, but still only one or two per party.

Navzar.2938:

They just need to add more high defense low hp mobs I guess?

The issue is rooted so deep into game design that side stepping the solution like this doesn’t really fix anything. It’s so deep that I doubt we will see a solution to the problem for years. Likely it will involve reverting back more towards the GW1 way of working which would mean increasing the effects dramatically.

Acutally I really like conditions
if you think of it, it takes a direct damage zerker a lot of resources (traits, gear, etc) to produce the damage output of what a humble condi build can have.
This is probably the reason why it is limited to 25 stacks.
The design of the game is quite clever: if you run a dungeon you can have two people in your group applying condition damage while providing additional output, such as heals or tankiness. My belief is that conditions were designed so that support roles could deal decent and useful damage.
The problem is not that the stacks are capped, it is that people just keep thinking that they have definite and limited roles. We could learn to play with conditions, but people don’t want to learn how to play for their group instead of just in their group.

Zelyhn.8069:

Acutally I really like conditions
if you think of it, it takes a direct damage zerker a lot of resources (traits, gear, etc) to produce the damage output of what a humble condi build can have.
This is probably the reason why it is limited to 25 stacks.
The design of the game is quite clever: if you run a dungeon you can have two people in your group applying condition damage while providing additional output, such as heals or tankiness. My belief is that conditions were designed so that support roles could deal decent and useful damage.
The problem is not that the stacks are capped, it is that people just keep thinking that they have definite and limited roles. We could learn to play with conditions, but people don’t want to learn how to play for their group instead of just in their group.

Actually you need just as much focus and attention on Condition damage that you would give to Raw damage to pull it off and especially on classes that aren’t the Elementalist. As a person with a Necro, Mesmer and Engineer almost all base bleed durations are non-existent on those classes (because they got nerfed in beta) meaning maintaining stacks to deal damage actually require Condition Duration. Gearing for Condition Duration usually ends up taking the same slots as where you’d focus on Crit Damage only it’s not possible in the Jewelry slots (another easy way to gear out for +Dmg as you noted elsewhere they have the highest stat ratio). The only class that can get away without Condition Duration is the Elementalist who has absurdly high condition durations when you compare them to other classes (go look it up) unless they go WvW/PvP where -Condition Duration will need to be countered.

You can “play for the team” all you want, none of that is going to erase the 10+ stacks the Warrior is going to put passively on the target with each crit which is a Minor Trait they can’t remove from the Greatsword/Crit line. Same with the Mesmer example above. Running up to a zone raid event and seeing that the bleed stacks are stuck at 100% basically means a Condition based player will be unable to output anything as their Bleeds will never apply and their Burns/Poisons will sit in a queue till doomsday along with everyone else.

The key are the resources used.
As an elem you can maintain about 10-12 stacks of bleed with no duration.
At 1k condition damage that is about 1100 dps just from conditions (most of our condition spells have a direct damage component, about 200 dps at 1000 total power).
With our strongest auto-attack, lightning whip, we deal: 1.22 * power * weapon damage / target armor
With 2000 power (about base + 1000) on a 2400 armor target we deal about 950 dps.
So you need more resources to deal more damage with direct attacks.
Even if these resource are plenty: traits, precision, crit damage, vulnerability etc.
My point being that you could allocate these resources to something else than damage and still contribute to the damage output of the group.
I am talking about PvE by the way.

All of which ignores if you can even apply those 10-12 stacks at all on the target because they’re capped out or not.

The caps are the entire issue.

Bloodmage spec (which sounds 10 times cooler than Condimentalist), that being full Rampager perma 25bleed+burn using does incredibly good single target PvE damage as long as your team doesnt use much bleeds and burn. With sharing poison Thief or Poison Filed supplied its even more impressive.

Of course its a very niche.

Zelyhn.8069:

Acutally I really like conditions
if you think of it, it takes a direct damage zerker a lot of resources (traits, gear, etc) to produce the damage output of what a humble condi build can have.
This is probably the reason why it is limited to 25 stacks.
The design of the game is quite clever: if you run a dungeon you can have two people in your group applying condition damage while providing additional output, such as heals or tankiness. My belief is that conditions were designed so that support roles could deal decent and useful damage.
The problem is not that the stacks are capped, it is that people just keep thinking that they have definite and limited roles. We could learn to play with conditions, but people don’t want to learn how to play for their group instead of just in their group.

Seems like others didn’t quite catch what you were saying, but I get it. To put it simply you think condi damage is a viable source of damage for those builds that don’t have a viable way to output damage because they’re more focused on providing support. For instance, a healing/support guardian can throw around burns for dps.

I would like to agree, except to incorporate condi damage into traits or gear on a healing specc’ed class could kitten it. For instance, on a 0/10/0/30/30 d/d bunker ele designed for aura sharing and healing any trait points thrown into earth or fire would stop it from doing its job as effectively and may also hurt its survivability. Gearing for it would do much the same where you could have a pvt or clerics piece in place of say a rabid piece.
Also pure damage still might be a better option over whatever you’d be getting from conditions. On such a build you’d probably end up doing more damage just from might stacking.
Furthermore, whatever conditions you’d be throwing around as a support specc would be significantly weaker than anyone actually built for pure condition damage and you’d only make it harder for them to do damage.

innocent ouarior.1954:

Bloodmage spec (which sounds 10 times cooler than Condimentalist), that being full Rampager perma 25bleed+burn using does incredibly good single target PvE damage as long as your team doesnt use much bleeds and burn. With sharing poison Thief or Poison Filed supplied its even more impressive.

Of course its a very niche.

Yea if you can go Asura for the Radiation Field plus stack condition duration you can get a really crazy source of Poison. Almost makes me wish I hadn’t deleted my Asura Elementalist for a Human one. As it is I tend to run with Reaper of Grenth instead but that’s a huge recast for limited duration, but also is extra Chill.