Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing a Power / Node Fighting engi for about a year now and never really bothered with condition builds. I handled myself pretty well against most classes/builds, but at least 70% of the time that I die, it’s usually because of something crazy like 20k-50k burning damage (I’m not even lying when I say I’ve seen conditions tick for 50k+ in the death breakdown screen). For instance, I can build for as much condition mitigation as possible, even sacrificing physical damage mitigation and my own ability to dish out damage but I’ll still see those burning ticks completely trump any physical attacks in most cases.

I tried a P/P burning build with Sigils of Intelligence, Sigil of Doom, and runes of balthazar today for the first time and I was amazed at how fast everything melted with very minimal effort on my part. At first this was just in hot join so I thought that maybe it was to be expected, so I then joined a team arena queue and met very similar results.

It’s extremely easy to proc a few stacks of bleeding or 5k+ burning tick compared to how easy it is to mitigate that damage, at least for us it is.

What is your opinions on condition damage in general? Is it in a pretty good place? Do you think classes should have easier access to condition mitigation? I don’t think given every class more ways to deal with conditions in such a way that they would actually be required to build into it would necessarily be a bad thing. It’s pretty easy to build into a something that can tank as much physical damage as possible, but we can’t seem to do the same with conditions. I personally don’t mind hard counters, but those hard counters should require me to give an arm and a leg in order to get to that point possibly opening me up to a plethora of other things that could easily counter me.

Hello frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

Conditions are fine! A huge weakness that Engineers have is lack of condition removal! So naturally conditions will be thuper op vs Engineers! The scariest professions to fight are Necromancers and other Engineers because of all the conditions they have! However if you had 50k of burning on you and burns are one of the strongest conditions that deal ~700/tick, you must’ve survived for at least 5 minutes! Nerf!

There is so much condi clear in the meta! Cleansing Ire removes 3 conditions with their adrenaline attack and they don’t even have to hit you with it! Berserker Stance makes Warriors completely immune to condis! Hard counters are great! And then you have Elementalists! If you crit them they remove a condition! Staff 5 removes like 5372598 conditions! Cleansing Flame removes 3 conditions! Ether Renewal removes 8 freakin conditions! Every time they swap to Water Attunement they remove a condition! And then some of them trait for Diamond Skin! Don’t even bother trying to fight a Diamond Skin Elementalist with a condi build! Anet loves hard counters! Bunker Guardians remove 2 conditions per shout and even more if they run virtues! It’s thuper thilly! This is the reason why Vee Wee does not run Balthazar Runes anymore in PvP! Yeah a 16 second burn in one hit is thuper thweet but if it’s just going to get cleansed in 3 seconds then it’s pointless and a waste!

And obviously by swapping to condition Engineer you’d see better results! In PvP condition Engineers are really, really strong! Power Engineers not so much!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Ameno.6813:

Do you think classes should have easier access to condition mitigation?

WTH is with this ellesee guy on every other thread? Is this like the engineer forum resident troll? Generally trolls are funny. On a scale of 0-10, this guy is a stillbirth.

On topic: Yes, there absolutely should be more condition clears. The current state of it is that literally NO CLASS in the ENTIRE GAME is good at condition clearing unless that is the focus of their entire build. With the exception of the necro, building in enough condi clearing leaves you with a bland, boring, and largely ineffective character.

In concept, its understandable that not everyone would be good at clearing, as everyone should have a weakness. In practice, no one is good at it, so its everyone’s weakness, and thus for roaming condi specs are popular because you know with 100% certainty that unless you fight a necro your enemy is going to struggle to clear your crap, (OR if they dont struggle, its because they spec’d themselves kitten enough that they wont be killing you either). There is also the issue of condition duration food, which is so obscenely powerful it forces everyone to either use it or use the condi reduction food. It really destroys the game.

On the other side of the problem, you have AOE cleansing in larger scale wvw, mainly through shouts. This means that conditions are pretty much useless in large scale battles, because you can count on their being enough guardians (or warriors with runes) that conditions wont stick.

The optimal solution would be to remove AOE cleansing so that stacking the most popular classes in the game doesnt render every single condition spec useless in large scale wvw (it still wouldnt be optimal because condi’s dont scale well when there are multiple condition users, but it’d be a lot better than it is now).

Meanwhile, the solution for 1v1 cleansing is a little tougher. It used to be that you would figure out how many cleanses you needed in your build and you would take those. Now, no amount of cleansing is enough. Part of this has to do with creep, as new conditions are added, and part has to do with the now over abundance of cover conditions. Personally, I’d like to see the game handle condition clearing in some logical threat order rather than last-in-first-out (EG, clears remove confusion, burning, bleeding, torment, poison, weakness, chill, cripple, blindness, vuln, in that order). This would let classes remove the worst of it rather than helplessly removing a vuln and a torment while the big hitters kill them without counter play. In addition, remove all condition +/- duration food.

The other option would be to somehow revert back to earlier GW2 days where classes had much more limited access to condition types (eg: no torment in the game, no perplexity or krait runes), and remove all condition +/- duration food.

/end rant

Raven.9603:

WTH is with this ellesee guy on every other thread? Is this like the engineer forum resident troll? Generally trolls are funny. On a scale of 0-10, this guy is a stillbirth.

I also get annoyed by this guy but only because he finds the need to mention he is the number #1 Engineer in North America and that he was the first one to hit Rank 80. If this is true, well that is awesome but I see no reason to mention it in every single post even some that are completely irrelevant to PvP. He should just put it in his Signature.

On topic: I don’t consider conditions to be overpowered for the Engineer but I do find it cheesy, it isn’t difficult to play well in comparison to power orientated specs (not counting decap). I think the idea of it having great impact on fights while also not being difficult to play makes it feel overpowered. That said, I personally wouldn’t mind some nerfs to our condition damage department.

EDIT: why is ‘b i t’ being kittend?

Hello frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

Just want to point out that both NA and EU ToL winners did not use any condition classes! Not one! Why you ask! Because of the reasons I stated! There are so many condition clears in the meta right now! Not only that but the most played class (Warriors) can be completely immune to conditions! So can Elementalists, a class that has spiked in popularity because of the buffs last patch! In addition to complete immunity, meta builds for these classes inherently can remove 75252798 conditions! Bunker Guardians, which are used on like 90% of teams, can cleanse their entire team of 2 conditions per shout AND even more if they run virtues! You can call me hurtful names like troll and dead baby but your giant 5 paragraphs of drivel just shows that you have no idea what you’re talking about! Yippee!

Also he’s talking about PvP and then you come in and insult everyone here and then start talking about WvW! Balance is doo doo in WvW! Everybody knows that! You thilly bear you!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Edit: Nice observation my frand atse! But didn’t an Ele and Engi win the last 2v2! None of them were condi! And they beat the double necro team that consisted of 2 of the best Necros in NA!! Ele has so many condi clears it’s thuper insane in the membrane!

Hello Friends! Ukune here, 1# more passionate lover then Vee Wee and world first at something?

on topic condi’s are in a good place if some certain cheese stuff is removed(mostly for WvW), in spvp conditions can be so easily countered by a team if they trait that way and it can render quite a few specs useless, engineer is lucky with this since it can easily reapply all its conditions very fast, mind you it packs alot less of a punch but still doable, but yea conditions are fine atm and it seems like anet is looking to buff power builds the next balance patch so that will knock the amount of conditions specs we see down a decent chunk which will make condition mitigation alot less difficult.

I like veewee’s posts. They aren’t ful of venom like a lot of the posters here. And they brighten my day. Not to mention the advice is knowlegable and usually pretty valuable and on topic. keep it up Veewee

Raven.9603:

Ameno.6813:

Do you think classes should have easier access to condition mitigation?

WTH is with this ellesee guy on every other thread? Is this like the engineer forum resident troll? Generally trolls are funny. On a scale of 0-10, this guy is a stillbirth.

On topic: Yes, there absolutely should be more condition clears. The current state of it is that literally NO CLASS in the ENTIRE GAME is good at condition clearing unless that is the focus of their entire build. With the exception of the necro, building in enough condi clearing leaves you with a bland, boring, and largely ineffective character.

In concept, its understandable that not everyone would be good at clearing, as everyone should have a weakness. In practice, no one is good at it, so its everyone’s weakness, and thus for roaming condi specs are popular because you know with 100% certainty that unless you fight a necro your enemy is going to struggle to clear your crap, (OR if they dont struggle, its because they spec’d themselves kitten enough that they wont be killing you either). There is also the issue of condition duration food, which is so obscenely powerful it forces everyone to either use it or use the condi reduction food. It really destroys the game.

On the other side of the problem, you have AOE cleansing in larger scale wvw, mainly through shouts. This means that conditions are pretty much useless in large scale battles, because you can count on their being enough guardians (or warriors with runes) that conditions wont stick.

The optimal solution would be to remove AOE cleansing so that stacking the most popular classes in the game doesnt render every single condition spec useless in large scale wvw (it still wouldnt be optimal because condi’s dont scale well when there are multiple condition users, but it’d be a lot better than it is now).

Meanwhile, the solution for 1v1 cleansing is a little tougher. It used to be that you would figure out how many cleanses you needed in your build and you would take those. Now, no amount of cleansing is enough. Part of this has to do with creep, as new conditions are added, and part has to do with the now over abundance of cover conditions. Personally, I’d like to see the game handle condition clearing in some logical threat order rather than last-in-first-out (EG, clears remove confusion, burning, bleeding, torment, poison, weakness, chill, cripple, blindness, vuln, in that order). This would let classes remove the worst of it rather than helplessly removing a vuln and a torment while the big hitters kill them without counter play. In addition, remove all condition +/- duration food.

The other option would be to somehow revert back to earlier GW2 days where classes had much more limited access to condition types (eg: no torment in the game, no perplexity or krait runes), and remove all condition +/- duration food.

/end rant

Warrior is better at cleansing than necro without sacrificing anything because pretty much EVERY SINGLE WARRIOR bring “Cleansing Ire” now. It is an 10 sec cleanse for 3 condition, and when combine with trait “Burst Mastery”(which pretty much most warriors bring now in PVP), it becomes a 7 Sec Cleanse. This, combine with Berserker Stance + lots of passive healing, is the curret Meta strongest condition counter.

Necro only posts a threat to Engi not because they’re the best cleanser (They’re more like burst cleansing than consistent cleansing), but they’re also good at applying and transferring conditions to Engineer, whom has few access to condition removal unless focus the entire build for it.

As for Elementalists, they have builds that’re just anti-condition when trait for it, and serve as one of the strongest anti-condition if you bring the right skills. (My condition Engi can’t hurt some of the Ele at all when they trait for diamond skin…)

As for Guardians, they shine more in team fight because they can help many others to cleanse their conditions.

Btw, I like how Vee Wee make his posts. At least what he says are mostly accurate and knowledgeable, and is also makes me chuckle abit sometimes. Donnu why you hate it so much. Your opinion seems more of a WvW player while Vee Wee focus on his points for TPVP.