Guild Wars 2

Dear ANet, I have been playing GW2 since it’s release and so far it has been an enjoyable ride. Yet a problem, for me and many other people, that has not been sufficiently addressed so far, is becoming too big/annoying and it is endangering the game.

Any mesmer that is not a berzerker feels very very weak in terms of damage output compared to that spec and gear. That alone would not be a problem, because what matters in a game, at least to me, is to have fun – after playing for more than 1 year as a zerker mesmer I must say, I can only have fun with any spec other than zerker.

The problem is that conditions/support builds are so weak in pve that in terms of efficiency the loss of damage does not compensate the gain in life and toughness. Bleed stacking, confusion mechanics, torment mechanics, burning duration and raw condition damage has already been discussed over and over in this forum, so I will not address that. Toughness, Healing Power, Boon variety and stack are in my opinion lacking and need to be discussed and addressed by the developers, and if not that then fight mechanics, for example so you don’t get one shot or two shot by regular mobs while having max toughness.

Now thanks to this, what happens when I press Y and try to do a dungeon? Well, most, if not all of the LFG tags ask specifically for a select group of classes and for zerkers, or they say for example “Fast Run” which is the same as asking for zerkers. Many people have been debating about this, with some calling others elitists for example, but truth is that the so called elitists are right, if you want efficiency when running dungeons, killing champions in open world, among other things, is plain stupid if you are not zerking.

This has to change, you need to urgently address this, not by nerfing zerking like you did last time, but by changing the other mechanics so that they are viable in an efficiency logic. For example, I am running a condition mesmer in pve but its very very hard for me to stack conditions with my condition sets scepter/torch-staff, even though I can apply easily fire, bleed, confusion, torment, poison (through weapon swapping). I do have fun with it, but the damage/surv is so low that any time I want to do a dungeon I feel the need to ask people if they don’t mind that I join.

Bear in mind I am giving a very specific example, there are many others but this is the one I chose to speak of. The scepter attack 1 does not making any sense for a weapon that is supposed to deal condition damage, two attacks that do exactly the same damage + a clone summon? Why can’t that skill cast confusion in the second attack? Why can’t the clone have a higher chance to crit so it bleeds enemies? I won’t speak about the second kill of scepter, but the third one could stack more confusion? What is the purpose of that, to deal damage of stack confusion, or do mediocre of both? Regarding the staff, the 1st skill damage is ridiculously low, and it only has one bounce, for condition to shine I need to do aoe damage, and so far for mesmers only the phantasm manages to deal condition (bleed through crit) in a consistent way to various mobs at the same time. The staff second skill is ok, the 3rd and 4th have huge cooldowns vs benefits they produce. Chaos shield has been discussed here a lot, so I will speak about the 4th skill. Chaos storm makes a lot more sense as a support skill than as a damage one, since the conditions it applies do not stack a lot, nor have synergy with confusion, fire and bleed. What is the purpose of the staff? Is it supposed to be a mediocre support weapon, or a very mediocre condition/power weapon?

I usually use either sword/sword+ sword/focus or sword/sword+gs, what is the point of the other weapons for pve? They all seem extremely lacklustre.

I am sorry if my post is confusing. You have proven that you can make the same skills behave differently in pve and pvp. My point is, please take a deep look at the mesmer and make it so that condition/support is as efficient in that role as berzerker is in it’s own role. Make weapon skills that have a decent synergy with your spec, and so on, listen to the community and react! Bear in mind that I didn’t even speak about the traits…

Thank you very much for your time.

Heh. This kind of post actually needs to go into the profession forum. I only say this, because the same issue with conditions versus direct DPS affects every class in GW2.
And you’re absolutely correct as far as the overall issue. Hell, I prefer condition builds, but we all know how relatively ineffective they are in PvE.
So, let me second this concept. Many of us, the players of GW2, would indeed like to
see condition (and heavy control) builds become more useful in PvE. There are two main barriers to this happening:

1. The way in which condition stacks are calculated and applied in PvE. Particularly the issue with stacks being overwritten.
   Could we get things to where each stack contributor is either; a.) separately applied in PvE. Or perhaps ; b.) the 25 stack cap remains, but is then an average between multiple condition users. This could at least help to make condi builds more viable
   versus bosses.

1. Defiant needs either reworked with an internal decay rate, or honestly removed.
   There is a world of difference between merely making control harder on bosses, and making it bleeding well impossible. I would honestly say that Unshakeable is a more “fair” method, seeing as it just weakens CCs, as opposed to outright negation.

Hello Advent, I agree with your points, though I can give you the example of the conditionmancer that can stack a lot of bleeds, can poison and apply weakness, can deal aoe condition extremely well. The condition mesmer cannot stack with the same efficiency, nor apply aoe conditions in an effective way.
Then you have the stack cap, among other things. But in this case I am talking about the mesmer in particular. Of course the mesmer brings more utility, but the trade-off for damage compared to a condition necromancer seems pretty big.

JoaoFA.8475:

Hello Advent, I agree with your points, though I can give you the example of the conditionmancer that can stack a lot of bleeds, can poison and apply weakness, can deal aoe condition extremely well. The condition mesmer cannot stack with the same efficiency, nor apply aoe conditions in an effective way.
Then you have the stack cap, among other things. But in this case I am talking about the mesmer in particular. Of course the mesmer brings more utility, but the trade-off for damage compared to a condition necromancer seems pretty big.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a condition necromancer, engineer, or mesmer. Any condition class will get blown out of the water by any zerker class. Necromancers are particularly bad because they aren’t particularly great as zerkers either though.

In general, mesmer conditions are more optimized for pvp, this is true. The rng of application includes some strong pvp conditions such as cripple and weakness, along with damage ones like bleed. However, again, even a class specialized for full condition damage spamming like necromancer is absolutely nothing compared to a half-decent zerker.

Defiant does not need changing, it’s there to stop incompetent players from randomly CC’ing and being rewarded for it. The games mechanics do not need changing either, there will always be optimal builds and weapons in a game, wanting your builds to be on par with the meta builds is flat out ludicrous. The only thing I can agree with being an issue is conditions, they need to remove the cap in PvE and make them scale better with condition damage or something.

Thank you for participating in this debate Pyroathiest, I agree completely with what you say, though I just gave that example because I posted this in the mesmer section, about my own experience The condition and support problem applies to all classes.
I really had the hope arenanet was going to address this in the super update they made, but unfortunately they only came up with a nerf to zerker, which in no way fixes the extremely dire conception problems inherent to the other specializations.

Dear Maha, why can’t you have meta builds in zerker, condition and support that are equal in effectiveness? At the moment you only have one specialization where you can have meta builds, which is the zerker, for the other specializations the “meta” is crap compared to the worst zerker meta. Bear in mind I used the word effectiveness, not raw damage.

maha.7902:

The games mechanics do not need changing either, there will always be optimal builds and weapons in a game, wanting your builds to be on par with the meta builds is flat out ludicrous. The only thing I can agree with being an issue is conditions, they need to remove the cap in PvE and make them scale better with condition damage or something.

Just thought I’d mention that these last 2 sentences are in direct opposition with each other.

The game most definitely does need to have some significant changes made. Maximum damage condition damage builds absolutely should be viable in the same way that maximum damage power builds are. This isn’t an easy fix though.

As I understand, the stacking cap exists for server/data reasons, not just an arbitrary pick. On top of that, most classes can’t even stack high enough to hit the stack cap by themselves, and even if they did…it would still be less damage than zerker. So to get condition damage builds to be viable they need to both figure out a way to improve the stacking limit AND get conditions doing more raw damage than they do now. This will absolutely require a pvp/wvw/pve split, as a boost this significant to conditions would absolutely destroy any semblance of balance that exists currently.

They also have to be very careful not to accidentally make conditions significantly stronger than zerker while they’re at it. If this happens, then they’ll kitten off everyone who’s gotten a zerker set of ascended gear, and I’m pretty sure they’d rather not do that. You might think that something like this is unlikely…and I’d advise you to look at how much other stuff they’ve screwed up on accident.

JoaoFA.8475:

Dear Maha, why can’t you have meta builds in zerker, condition and support that are equal in effectiveness? At the moment you only have one specialization where you can have meta builds, which is the zerker, for the other specializations the “meta” is crap compared to the worst zerker meta. Bear in mind I used the word effectiveness, not raw damage.

Because ANet clearly stated this game would have a damage, support and control trinity where all players and classes are expected and capable of doing each of them. Support and control doesn’t scale with any type of gear, so the only thing you can scale is your damage – this means the logical progression to optimising is that once you have the correct support traits and utilities and weapons with CC (if necessary) the last thing to so is to apply as much offensive gear you can handle while being able to maintain support and control. The ‘ultimate evolution’ of this is the full berserker player who can appy the maximum amount of damage, support and control required in an encounter. This is why builds dedicated to support don’t work and will and should never be optimal – because you are forgoing damage, and thus neglecting the one part of the pseudo-trinity we have the most influence over in favour of only prioritising one aspect of it.

Just thought I’d mention that these last 2 sentences are in direct opposition with each other.

The game most definitely does need to have some significant changes made. Maximum damage condition damage builds absolutely should be viable in the same way that maximum damage power builds are. This isn’t an easy fix though.

Condition damage being viable is the only change needed. I have no idea how to make it viable so I just threw a random idea out there. The problem with making it scale better of course is you get organised groups @ 25 might having power build characters with 875 – 1175 condition damage (depending on trait line bonuses) just for having might.

Maha, a condition focused class is focused of doing damage, but instead of relying on raw damage output via critical damage, they rely on “dot”. In your post you say that the “ultimate evolution” of people who want to do damage is full berserker, so that doesnt make sense. Picture a necromancer that can’t provide support and focuses on condition damage, what is your thought on this?

I probably should have clarified – I’m saying mechanically the evolution is a full berserker user, but condition damage should be viable too. The problem however, is like you mentioned, condition damage is DoT. If a fight lasts ten seconds, DoT doesn’t matter when you can burst out power damage to destroy the boss quickly – however if you look for Lupicus condition damage solos, they are able to be done in good time (around the 6 – 8 minute mark I believe) because it’s a prolonged fight and so the whole damage over time concept works nicely.

Picture a necromancer that can’t provide support and focuses on condition damage, what is your thought on this?

My thought is that a player who doesn’t build for damage and support should never be what is considered optimal. Meta builds maximise on damage modifiers in their traiting but if there are support traits that are more relevant and better to take than an extra modifier, we will always take the support trait. Meta builds are builds that like I said, maximise damage but have the correct support traits and utilities. If the maximum damage means giving up a modifier in order to get that support – it should be done.

It is a well known fact that condition damage only can reach 4k dps with caps while beserker direct damage can reach 5k dps. Anet needs to address this issue. To be honest I prefer more open available damage like in Archeage (can’t wait for release) than GW2.

Don’t forget it is 4kdps under very very optimal situations, like full burning upkeep, 25 stacks of bleed, etc.