Guild Wars 2

There have been rumors about all conditions and boons that stack in duration to get a maximum stack of 5.

If this is true then I see a potential problem. The staff skill ‘Frozen Ground’ causes kittens of 2 seconds of chill each. However, projectile finishers only cause 1 second of chill each. If the change is implemented, then we’ll have the odd situation where it’s actually disadvantageous to use finishers in fields because the total chill duration will be less than from the field itself.

The same would apply to skills like Healing Rain and Healing Spring.

On the plus side it will save Anet a lot of money on bandwidth. Between that and more RNG chests they should be seeing some fat Q4 profits.

Elewhaaaaa?! Either way Ele will be at the bottom regardless…

This also messes with regeneration and fury from swapping.

What worries me most is getting a stupid situation like 15+2+2+2+2, so you’d have to wait 15 seconds for your near useless stacks to start disappearing.

Basically, for this to work they’d have to change a lot of things to have longer durations but with a cd or make the shortest stacks get used up first.

Does anyone know how this is handled with necros and weakness from their fields? Because weakness already stacks up to 5 times, maybe a necro player can give us some insights?

For the record, I found boon stacking to be one of the best new features of Guild Wars 2’s combat system. Not longer did you have usekitten ons or have to worry what stacks with what or what replaces what…so those planned restrictions can be thrown in the bin for all I care. It’s not gonna solve the condition stacking meta anyway.

ThiBash.5634:

Does anyone know how this is handled with necros and weakness from their fields? Because weakness already stacks up to 5 times, maybe a necro player can give us some insights?

For the record, I found boon stacking to be one of the best new features of Guild Wars 2’s combat system. Not longer did you have usekitten ons or have to worry what stacks with what or what replaces what…so those planned restrictions can be thrown in the bin for all I care. It’s not gonna solve the condition stacking meta anyway.

Nobody knows how it will work, because it hasn’t been implemented and Anet hasn’t said much about the mechanics. There are a lot of cases like this across most of the classes, how it turns out is anyone’s guess at this point.

Stoning just got a whole lot weaker. 100% projectile attacks got the shaft

ThiBash.5634:

Does anyone know how this is handled with necros and weakness from their fields? Because weakness already stacks up to 5 times, maybe a necro player can give us some insights?

For the record, I found boon stacking to be one of the best new features of Guild Wars 2’s combat system. Not longer did you have usekitten ons or have to worry what stacks with what or what replaces what…so those planned restrictions can be thrown in the bin for all I care. It’s not gonna solve the condition stacking meta anyway.

My guess is it will work like the Retaliation change that happened a while ago as in you won’t even notice it.

If it works the same (which would be a good guess) then you can stack up to 5 times whatever the durations are. As soon as 1 of the 5 wears off you can pick up another stack. You don’t have to wait for all 5 of your stacks to wear off before getting another stack.

Retal was changed some time ago like this and my guess is that they are just going to do the other duration boons the same way. You really shouldn’t notice a difference in your boon up time.

So the same thing with duration conditions also I have a necro also but I can’t say I ever actually noticed not being able to keep weakness up.

With the change for both conditions and boons if you have decent durations to begin with you shouldn’t really notice a difference.

Oddly, I thought that this was already present with most conditions due these patch notes, specifically this:

-Weakness: Changed from 50% fumble on regular attacks to 50% fumble on all attacks. Now only stacks up to 5 times (still stacks duration).

This in combination with testing 100% chill duration with Frost Fan and Arcane Power in combination with Elemental Surge led me to believe that chill has a cap of 5 but still stacks duration. (I could only get to ~34-35 seconds of chill on the practice golems with said combo)

I guess I haven’t seen it asked, so if any devs are paying attention, could we get some information on whether duration conditions have a maximum stacks or maximum allowed duration?

dukevonart.2691:

Oddly, I thought that this was already present with most conditions due these patch notes, specifically this:

-Weakness: Changed from 50% fumble on regular attacks to 50% fumble on all attacks. Now only stacks up to 5 times (still stacks duration).

This in combination with testing 100% chill duration with Frost Fan and Arcane Power in combination with Elemental Surge led me to believe that chill has a cap of 5 but still stacks duration. (I could only get to ~34-35 seconds of chill on the practice golems with said combo)

I guess I haven’t seen it asked, so if any devs are paying attention, could we get some information on whether duration conditions have a maximum stacks or maximum allowed duration?

Yea I think burning might not work that way and probably will be brought under the umbrella also. You put enough burning on someone then it doesn’t have the timer on anymore just the burning symbol.

oZii.2864:

If it works the same (which would be a good guess) then you can stack up to 5 times whatever the durations are. As soon as 1 of the 5 wears off you can pick up another stack. You don’t have to wait for all 5 of your stacks to wear off before getting another stack.

Retal was changed some time ago like this and my guess is that they are just going to do the other duration boons the same way. You really shouldn’t notice a difference in your boon up time.

But that’s the thing: in the example I gave, there is a difference. Frozen Ground adds 5 stacks of 2 seconds chill. However, if people are using projectile finishers while it is active, each finisher will add 1 stack of 1 second chill.

If something gets hit by Frozen Ground, in the 1st second it gets 2 seconds of chill. Now let’s assume 4 finishers each add 1 second. In the 2nd second it won’t add any chill, because there are still 5 stacks of chill active on the target. Meaning the caster just lost 1 second of chill thanks to the projectile finishers that should make the effect stronger. If all the effects came from people with +10% condition duration, then the 3rd second stack from Frozen Ground will also not be applied because there’s still 5 stacks active (the next stack won’t cease to exist until 0.1 second AFTER the 3rd second would have been applied.

Of course in practice things won’t go as neat as the example, but it still means that combo finishers could steal the place of much stronger effects.

To me, that’s just not right. And while weakness is fairly easy to keep up permanently (in the right builds), chill is not. In fact, most chill effects have a base duration of 2-3 seconds. So losing 5 seconds due to finishers that should enhance the effect is something we really shouldn’t want.

Some skills’ conditions are restricted to a 5 stacking limit while others are not. Usually it is mentionned in the tooltips.

There are abilities that cause ten stacks. Are any of those abilities going to be cut down because of this?

ImProVocateur.5189:

There are abilities that cause ten stacks. Are any of those abilities going to be cut down because of this?

The better question might be “if those abilities are cut down, is there going to be compensation?”

That would be horrible for burning and bleeding effects. And sad for boon dependant professions.. they need to make enormous changes to skills that provide boons and conditions, which I fear might take them a looong time to fix. There are many bugs in the game since launch still, which haven’t been addressed.

Well it nerfes condition builds a lot (in PvP they needed a nerf, dont think this is the right one though).
Good thing for the Elementalist …. Elementalist is a class without any rly damaging condition build.
So for Elementalist this is a bit of a buff (in PvP).

The 5 stack limit is only for things that stack duration, so it won’t affect bleeding.

I’m not sure if I’d call this a good thing for elementalists since we’re pretty boon heavy. I’d have to wait until it hits to see if it really makes much of an impact though.

Don’t worry, we will still suck either way.

So if you use Drake’s Breath you pretty much deny all your friends (and yourself) from putting up burning with a single spell? I really hope I’m wrong with this.

You won’t notice any difference. This is mostly a nerf to large scale fights

Yes you are wrong. The stacking limit only applies to weakness and a few other non-damaging conditions.

Zelyhn.8069:

Yes you are wrong. The stacking limit only applies to weakness and a few other non-damaging conditions.

The leaked patch notes suggest that it’ll be applied to all conditions next patch. Also, the ‘combos usefulness’ issue hasn’t been adressed yet.

Its conditions like burn that stack in duration

Projectile Finishers better ignore the 5 limit.