(edited by Gnat.9405)
Bleed Redesign
I think its a pretty simple solution really.
Double the stack cap in 5 man dungeons, and 90% of the complains go away. If hardware limitations and computations are a problem on their end, surely a dungeon restricted to no more than 5 players can handle those extra stacks of bleeding when we have 80 v 80 clashing in wvw with a 25 bleed stack limit.
Open world bosses are pointlessly easy (except for Teq), and the cap removal is not nearly as called for in that environment. Most of us would be able to accept that staying in place if we could do dungeons without a respec required.
I think you are much more likely to see the cap changed than a redesign of the system.
While I agree that increasing the cap in smaller party instances would be an effective band-aid, I also think that bleed ramp time is the real culprit for making conditions super ineffective in PvE.
While I agree that increasing the cap in smaller party instances would be an effective band-aid, I also think that bleed ramp time is the real culprit for making conditions super ineffective in PvE.
I don’t know about that. The real issue is that the big booster things that compound quickly, like power/critical damage/crit all work together while conditions only have damage and duration to work with (missing a third stat that really effects them).
Vulnerability has no effect on conditions either, which makes them less attractive.
Even with NO CAP to speak up, conditions would still fall short of power builds. That is a completely different discussion though.
And what about objects and unanimated things?
What if Necromancer’s bleeds would be translated to a “Decadence” or “Corruption” conditon on them to solve the problem?
To match the change or to emphasize it, ANET can implement it through Curse traits maybe.
You don’t think that if we were able to open on mobs with 2.5k bleed ticks, conditions would be considered more desirable? While I agree that modifiers such as Vuln and an additional effective stat are important, I don’t think they are as important for the build as they are for power builds.
In this vein, what other kind of stat would be effective for condition damage?
1. Removing the cap. By the nature of how scaling works with both conditions and direct damage it wont solve anything, damage wise condi users would be still subpar.
2. Unique effects. A few skill already use this (Binding blade, Riposte, Tainted shackles), which could replace bleeds and giving your own class specific dot, but reapplying it would be harder to balance and not to mention class stacking and world bosses.
3. Personal stacks. See above. And of course hardware / bandwith issue is still on Arena nets side.
Dots in GW2 reward you with the ability to do damage while kite your enemy and get defensive stats, making it subpar in damage, thus we are in the same place where we started and zerker uberalles. Remember shadow priests from WoW? Dot dot dot afk enemy died. Do we want this? E-sports you know …
@Dalanor, that’s the reason I think it’s so difficult to deal with bleeds at the moment – whatever change they make will cause tons of balancing problems unless it’s PvE only, and splitting not just a skill as they’ve done in the past, but an entire mechanic for a different game mode may be difficult.
I’ve heard the argument made in the past that conditions are not supposed to be used as a primary build type, but as offhand damage. I don’t agree with this. And I don’t necessarily agree with conditions being damage as you kite, considering GW2’s combat mechanics, and being able to attack on the move, every profession having access to range, etc.
If conditions weren’t meant to be a spec, there wouldn’t be so many of them on some classes. That may be true of eles and guards, but other classes have viable condition only specs. Also dire gear wouldn’t exist if that we’re true, nor would it ever be the main stat on gear.
@Roe, this is precisely why I disagree.
Conditions will always be slightly less desirable in certain PvE fights than direct damage that will mainly instakill the mobs. Thats the point of debuffs, they take time to ramp up. If someone in a raid was asking for more DoTs, they aren’t asking for a big instant damage attack, they are asking for damage over time, which by its nature needs to ramp up.
Also, it really doesn’t take time for bleeds to be stacked to a decent enough size. This is why Condi Necros are/were so scary in PvP, we’d burst you with enough bleeds to be lethal in a very short period of time. It takes a little time to max them out, but you can get more than half of a full stack in a very quick rotation.
The problem with conditions in this game is I’d say three-fold. The first is that big bosses will get very easily capped out on conditions. This wouldn’t be as big of an issue, if it wasn’t for the second problem: condition stacking has nothing to do with the damage. A new bleed will push an old one off, even if that old one would deal 1 million damage, and the new one will deal 40. And the third problem is that PvE has been designed to be so easy that debuffs aren’t really useful. Why do I need to make the mobs weaker when an optimized group will completely wipe every group before I’ve even gotten through a full rotation of debuffs.
They can fix the first and second problems just by increasing the stacking limits on dungeon bosses. The third problem is simply an issue of design. The harder a fight is, the better conditions are. But right now very few boss fights are hard enough to even need conditions, when zerker warriors can literally repeatedly smash their face on their keyboard and not worry about anything.
That’s the thing – conditions are not even a viable option. Many, Necromancers in particular, feel that they should be. Some of the most impressive builds are based on conditions, and we have been set on the table as the condition class.
There wouldn’t be as much of a discrepancy if Necromancers had a cleave option for dungeons. The class suffers on the brink of uselessness for most content, and bringing conditions up to speed with berserker could solve that problem. Of course giving us a cleave weapon for a decent power build option is a much simpler solution.