Guild Wars 2

I know everyone seems to love power builds for solo PvE leveling — but how about going condition based? Love dem dots.

Bad idea? Ok idea?

For leveling? Conditions are scaled horribly at lower levels, so I wouldn’t recommend using a condition build until you are at least level 60, maybe higher.

Take option 3, spam minions on bar, play with whatever weapon you like/lean the profession while the minions do all the actual leveling work, works to around the point where you need to leave sparkfly.

Wells on leveling + daggers = fast and easy

It is viable, as always. It’s really up to you. I for example absolutely hate ele scepter, no matter how many build out there use it, how good other say it is.

Open world is so easy, nothing can really go wrong. Take whatever you want, try to figure out new trait combination. And have fun.

Is is viable, but very slow. While leveling you normally go 1vs1 with mobs, and since you don’t do too much dmg yet, the mobs will get to you. I suggest ANY power- or minion-based build to level up, instead.

And yes, Afya, I hate scepter too.

Conditions are actually very strong in the very low levels. But they quickly drop off in effectiveness. Wouldnt ever recommend condition builds for dungeons though.

Also, power build benefit from many stat. Power, Prec, Crit dmg is all you need and pretty much every gear you get from mobs will have these stats in it. Mostly power.
For condition build to work you need condition dmg, prec, condition duration. Toughness doesn’t contribute until you get superior undead rune so it’s out of question.

Take a look at this page:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature

For double attribute gear, 5 out of 16 affix has power major stat. condition damage/duration combined only has 3/16.

For triple attribute, I don’t want to count so look at the list yourself. Power still outnumber condition stats.

TL;DR: More gear has power stats and it’s easier to obtain via leveling.

spoj.9672:

Conditions are actually very strong in the very low levels. But they quickly drop off in effectiveness. Wouldnt ever recommend condition builds for dungeons though.

This guy is right and wrong.

Leveling conditions is definitely an issue, I did it, and when I realized how much easier running Minions would’ve been, I was beyond kitten ed off…

If you want pretty much the easiest leveling process in the entire game, across any class, the Minion Master Necro holds that title.

Now, being a Condition-Build in Dungeons can actually be one of the best builds, honestly. Simply because of Epidemic. Whereas the MORE Condition-Based players you have in your group, the better it is. Only in Boss Fights where it’s ONE BOSS will you have an issue. Mossman, Blizzard Fractal, etc. Otherwise, you just run towards a crowd, hit DS, hit 5, then 4, then Epidemic and watch the damage roll in.

It amuses me when people think condition builds are one of the “best builds” for dungeons. Way to show how little you know about dungeons.

spoj.9672:

It amuses me when people think condition builds are one of the “best builds” for dungeons. Way to show how little you know about dungeons.

Depends on the dungeon, really. Honor of the Waves, condition builds are really good due to many of the bosses healing themselves (perma-poison is really easy for condition builds) and having protection (which conditions ignore). In Fractals of the Mists, the volcano fractal is also a good spot for condition builds, since they can keep going when the shaman blocks all direct damage and Epidemic away all the adds in the final fight.

Those are 2 instances where conditions are pretty good (dont agree on hotw though, raw damage kills them way faster than they can heal). But not exactly better. Your ignoring the many places where conditions get cleansed constantly or where direct damage is modified by boss mechanics. Or that raw damage just kills everyting faster in all situations. You can deal with boons on mobs in many ways. Direct damage always works, condition damage becomes completely useless in some situations so its really stupid to pigeon hole yourself with a condition build.

The big issue’s are lots of objects don’t take condi. (Turrets/Doors/etc)
Any big world event, the condi cap, is going to be a problem with doing any damage.

I know leveled people, use Hybrid in PvE. Not very tanky so it might be why necro’s get asked to sit out boss fights in dungys… But anyways, I know they use some minions for objects (Turrets /doors etc)

Conditions scale the same at lower levels as they do at higher levels, but it’s a bit more difficult to gear for condition damage, condition duration and precision until lv. 80. (Then again, the same applies for power, precision and critical damage.)

Depends on the PvE situation really and your team possibly. I have tried epidemic on a non-condition specced necro and it was fuuunnnn =P

I’m still leveling my necro (at 35 now) so take my thoughts (not advice! lol) with a grain of salt. I tried conditions early on and while it worked, I usually hate to kite an enemy forever. I switched to staff so I can range (dropping marks anywhere theres an enemy off to the side, while auto hits those in front of me). For skills I run flesh golem, shadow fiend, and epidemic (with blood fiend for my healing utility). Leveling has become a breeze compared to my old condition build. The minions hold aggro while I drop marks. I can easily solo 4 or 5 enemies of my level without ever entering DS.

spoj.9672:

It amuses me when people think condition builds are one of the “best builds” for dungeons. Way to show how little you know about dungeons.

This tells me you think dungeon running is reserved for CoF speed runs. Condition damage is kitten in a lot of boss fights (arah comes to mind) the dps is similar to direct damage but you get increased mobility and flexability. Most War/guardian/Mesmer groups won’t take a condition build but they will also struggle through hard content (and there is some hard content out there you just have to look hard lol)

P.s this was done from my phone so sorry for formatting

Problem is condition dmg is horrible in 99% of all situations.
Condition dmg is affected by to few things while you can build more dmg in power by crit dmg and vulnerability stacking. Now if you look at condition dmg you can only go for condition dmg + bleed/condition duration which would be oki if it wasnt for the shared bleed cap of 25.

But as others have said its pretty much down to how anet designs everything around power ( no high toughness mobs / bosses ) and oneshot mechanics.

@spoj.9672 to be fair condition build do seem to be the best for necro in a dungeon, cause well if your going power why use necro.

Karka should be noted as one of the very rare situations where conditions are better than direct damage. They have very high armor ratings and low health.

You know I bet if we were aloud to use 3rd party mods like damage meters people would see that conditions are very powerfull. The only thing I disagree with is bleed cap but having 100+ stacks of bleed on a boss would be op.

Keep in mind just as in all mmos your direct dmg classes “feel” like they are doing a lot more damage but in games with meters it shows DoT classes usually are top dps. Wouldn’t be surprised to see Necro beat War in actual damage done every time.

@tattoohead.3217 If people could have their own bleed stack of 25 they would be more in line with power but most likely still behind in dps.

Yes bleed is still ticking if your interrupted etc but keep in mind that power have no buildup time while bleeds in gw2 works as fire and maintain not fire and forget.

I like the idea of a secondary condition being caused by maximum stacks. If the 26th bleed hits, the 25 stacks are dropped and a new condition say “Major Trauma” or something get’s stacked (and could be duration based rather than stacked – whatever). It could be massive damage, or some other effect.

tattoohead.3217:

You know I bet if we were aloud to use 3rd party mods like damage meters people would see that conditions are very powerfull. The only thing I disagree with is bleed cap but having 100+ stacks of bleed on a boss would be op.

Keep in mind just as in all mmos your direct dmg classes “feel” like they are doing a lot more damage but in games with meters it shows DoT classes usually are top dps. Wouldn’t be surprised to see Necro beat War in actual damage done every time.

One problem is that we can calculate condition DPS quite easily. Let’s take a necro with 2k condition damage (which requires consumables and/or might or sigil stacks). Now, let’s pretend that he could maintain perma burning and poison as well as 25 stacks of bleeds (he can if he has allied help via Guardians for burning, but the bleeds are difficult), just for the sake of argument.

(142.5 damage per bleed, rounded to 142 per stack, 848 burning, and 284 poison).

The total DPS is 4662. Most Power builds can hit harder than that with a single attack, and they attack more often than 1/second. The only way that condi builds have superior DPS is against multiple opponents, but many of those single attacks that hit harder also cleave.

tattoohead.3217:

spoj.9672:

It amuses me when people think condition builds are one of the “best builds” for dungeons. Way to show how little you know about dungeons.

This tells me you think dungeon running is reserved for CoF speed runs. Condition damage is kitten in a lot of boss fights (arah comes to mind) the dps is similar to direct damage but you get increased mobility and flexability. Most War/guardian/Mesmer groups won’t take a condition build but they will also struggle through hard content (and there is some hard content out there you just have to look hard lol)

P.s this was done from my phone so sorry for formatting

Ermmmm….

I do all dungeons with warrior, guard, mesmer and i occasionally take my dagger necro. All of my classes are built full dps beserker builds and i melee pretty much everything in dungeons and fractals. You saying that im just talking about CoF is another reason why i dont think you know what your talking about. CoF is the only dungeon that pug groups speedrun because its completely faceroll and doesnt require any dodges. The influx of cof warriors that joined our CoE and other dungeon groups after the dungeon reward changes was horrible, they were terrible. The pug scene is about 2-3 months behind the proper dungeon runners in terms of knowledge, builds and tactics.

Anyway back on topic. Conditions are far from viable in most pve content due to the way anet designed their mechanics and their inability to balance pve. Conditions dont scale with damage modifiers or dmg boosts from mechanics (superheated in dredge fractal, poison from malrona and champ orrian spiders and phase shift for Brie). Conditions also suffer from a stack limit and other members of the group can take up those stacks with low damage bleed ticks. Conditions also take time to build up and in that time most trash mobs can be killed by raw damage. There is also a load of bosses and mobs which reduce condi duration or constantly cleanse it. Theres also the issue of condition builds not providing anyway of contributing to a group dps increase.

Is it ok that conditions are so bad in pve? No definately not. But thats the way it is and there is really no point in deluding yourself.

wiazabi.2549:

@spoj.9672 to be fair condition build do seem to be the best for necro in a dungeon, cause well if your going power why use necro.

Not really. Necro’s have a lot of access to debuffs and blinds (non damaging conditions). As soon as those debuffs become more important in dungeons necros may find a place. Our blind access isnt as good as other classes so its not enough at the moment. We definitely already have a place as a debuffer, we just need that role to be more useful/impactful. You dont need to build condition damage to get access to what is supposed to make a necro useful.

However the one fight I really like to have a necro on is Laurent in TA f/f due to his hard hitting cleave auto attack. Even with full protection uptime from a guardian he really chips the hp away from a beserker group. So with extra blind spam on top of the guardians blinds and 100% weakness uptime, a necro is pretty useful in that situation. Also you cannot crit on the final boss of all TA paths. So power and condition damage are the only options for damaging them, full dps builds are still best due to the damage modifiers they take (you could run a zerker build but swap your gear for PVT and you would be just as effective) but a necro in carrion armour can actually be quite good for the nightmare tree.

Actually, I’m pretty sure the Nightmare Tree is immune to condition damage too (not to the conditions, just the damage). At least, this used to be the case. I don’t know if it still is or not.

No its not the case anymore. Not sure when they changed it but it definately takes condition damage now and has done for several months.

Well, that’s good to know. Nothing worse than Object bosses.

spoj.9672:

tattoohead.3217:

spoj.9672:

It amuses me when people think condition builds are one of the “best builds” for dungeons. Way to show how little you know about dungeons.

This tells me you think dungeon running is reserved for CoF speed runs. Condition damage is kitten in a lot of boss fights (arah comes to mind) the dps is similar to direct damage but you get increased mobility and flexability. Most War/guardian/Mesmer groups won’t take a condition build but they will also struggle through hard content (and there is some hard content out there you just have to look hard lol)

P.s this was done from my phone so sorry for formatting

Ermmmm….

I do all dungeons with warrior, guard, mesmer and i occasionally take my dagger necro. All of my classes are built full dps beserker builds and i melee pretty much everything in dungeons and fractals. You saying that im just talking about CoF is another reason why i dont think you know what your talking about. CoF is the only dungeon that pug groups speedrun because its completely faceroll and doesnt require any dodges. The influx of cof warriors that joined our CoE and other dungeon groups after the dungeon reward changes was horrible, they were terrible. The pug scene is about 2-3 months behind the proper dungeon runners in terms of knowledge, builds and tactics.

Anyway back on topic. Conditions are far from viable in most pve content due to the way anet designed their mechanics and their inability to balance pve. Conditions dont scale with damage modifiers or dmg boosts from mechanics (superheated in dredge fractal, poison from malrona and champ orrian spiders and phase shift for Brie). Conditions also suffer from a stack limit and other members of the group can take up those stacks with low damage bleed ticks. Conditions also take time to build up and in that time most trash mobs can be killed by raw damage. There is also a load of bosses and mobs which reduce condi duration or constantly cleanse it. Theres also the issue of condition builds not providing anyway of contributing to a group dps increase.

Is it ok that conditions are so bad in pve? No definately not. But thats the way it is and there is really no point in deluding yourself.

Not to start a rant, you are entitled to your own play style but you kind of made my point here. Sorry if your not running CoF but your still running full Zerker “speed” run style.

In a dungeon with any skill requirement the boss fights (and trash pulls) will not be over in <60 sec and a condition build will be on par DPS wise with most classes, certainly doing more DPS than a dagger melee Necro. In the end you may “feel” like you are doing more damage because you see big numbers (and that is fun no arguments there) but over a whole fight conditions will add up to more total damage if done right. Even with cleanse mechanics, you cant melee 100% of the time because most bosses have movement phases. Thats kind of like a melee cleanse.

Oh and conditions do benefit from Might and the application of conditions benefit from Quickness, the only thing they dont benefit from is Vuln . I would welcome that change for sure. Also the bleed stack is not a real issue in the right team comps Im not suggesting a full condition group.

Anyhow sorry for the text wall, I mean well. Just sick of the Zerker or nuthin fotm noobs. (ANET make some real content that cant be facerolled)

You have to look at conditions in the values they give in damage, and then the amount of time they run. Once that elapsed time has run and you started your “damage rotation” over, then you’ve achieve your maximum DPS.

Conditions are actually fairly solid DPS. Sure they don’t seem like they deal much, but look at it this way:
if you auto attack with the scepter for example and deal, oh lets say 700 direct damage and 1.5k bleeding, that’s 2.2k damage 2/3 attacks. That’s more than most necromancer’s will get in direct damage outside of death shroud. Not to mention with scepter+dagger/staff you get more AOE damage than any other necromancer build.

Also, I’m tired of everyone comparing people to zerker warriors. Warriors were designed to be the highest possible DPS, especially with zerker gear.

While conditions are indeed good in ‘normal’ circumstances, if your group is really working together to maximize offensive boons then they will start lagging very far on behind direct damage builds. Under these circumstances and with 5 characters that are fully specced into damage (class really doesn’t matter here), all bosses in the game are killed before they can do enough damage to overwhelm even a zerker build. Not only does this lead to completing the dungeon that much faster, but it’s also safer as there is less time where someone can mess up. So it’s only normal that this is considered to be a superior way to complete dungeons.

Obviously though, you’re very reliant in this case on everyone in your party pretty much doing max damage. Cause if even one is lagging behind, it increases the kill time and it can become detrimental to your party. As such you can’t really expect to pull this stuff of in your average pug, which is probably where some of the frustration on both sides is coming from.

An interesting read on the subject can be found here: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84416-guide-minmax-dungeon-groups-with-any-class-composition/

And a video showcasing it in practice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5uGiLj1caN0

tattoohead.3217:

Not to start a rant, you are entitled to your own play style but you kind of made my point here. Sorry if your not running CoF but your still running full Zerker “speed” run style.

In a dungeon with any skill requirement the boss fights (and trash pulls) will not be over in <60 sec and a condition build will be on par DPS wise with most classes, certainly doing more DPS than a dagger melee Necro. In the end you may “feel” like you are doing more damage because you see big numbers (and that is fun no arguments there) but over a whole fight conditions will add up to more total damage if done right. Even with cleanse mechanics, you cant melee 100% of the time because most bosses have movement phases. Thats kind of like a melee cleanse.

Oh and conditions do benefit from Might and the application of conditions benefit from Quickness, the only thing they dont benefit from is Vuln . I would welcome that change for sure. Also the bleed stack is not a real issue in the right team comps Im not suggesting a full condition group.

Anyhow sorry for the text wall, I mean well. Just sick of the Zerker or nuthin fotm noobs. (ANET make some real content that cant be facerolled)

Ok i dont speedrun, my guild just runs efficiently with dps builds because we dont need the safety of tanky gear. Were pretty laid back but we know how to do things fast. We dont want to spend hours in dungeons when we can go through pretty much the whole set in a couple of hours. Even when we get pugs to fill out slots most bosses die in under 60 seconds, trash dies within a few seconds the same can be said about some bosses aswell.

I ran TA the other day and we had a condi necro pug. Dps wasnt noticeably worse than if he was taking another zerker build but stuff died too fast for his conditions to really be fully effective. We took him into coe aswell because he was a competent pug despite his less than perfect build. CoE has some real anti condi fights so he wouldnt of been contributing to dps for most of that dungeon, didnt matter because we had 2 eles with LH/fiery GS so dps was very good. Its a case of yeah its fine sometimes but other times your just completely carrying the condi player. This is why if someone really wants to play a condi necro i direct them to hybrid builds.

Its not an issue of feeling like i do more damage because of “big numbers”. Its been proven that every class has a maximum dps build and they all involve beserker gear. Conditions just arent in the same league for pve. Id love them to be but its not the case at the moment.

The only way a condition build comes close to a beserker build is if you can maintain 25 stacks of bleed. Which is impossible for two reasons. You would need to stack the hell out of duration to do it properly and it just never happens consistanly with one condi necro in a dungeon. Also other classes will be applying low damage short duration bleeds through traits which will constantly prevent the necro from apply 25 stacks of decent damaging bleeds.

spoj.9672:

Also other classes will be applying low damage short duration bleeds through traits which will constantly prevent the necro from apply 25 stacks of decent damaging bleeds.

Actually, it’s been proven time and again that condition stacks with higher damage take priority over lower damage condition stacks. (either way someone losses out on DPS though)

striker.3704:

spoj.9672:

Also other classes will be applying low damage short duration bleeds through traits which will constantly prevent the necro from apply 25 stacks of decent damaging bleeds.

Actually, it’s been proven time and again that condition stacks with higher damage take priority over lower damage condition stacks. (either way someone losses out on DPS though)

No they dont. The first bleeds are always knocked off. This happens with might and everything else in the game. Dont see why it would be different for one condition.

If this was the case I would never see any bleed ticks on a world boss but I do for a short duration because ive just overwritten someone elses bleeds.

While I agree direct damage is generally more effective and versatile than condition damage, there are many situations in dungeons and fractals where high condition damage is useful. All of those situations involve crowd control. AC has spiders and skelks that can be a nuissiance if everyone in the group builds for single target dps. Having one player built for crowd control is not a bad idea and Necromancer is one of the best professions for it.

Saying a condition build is useless is not true in the context of team play. What Arenanet struggles to do is let players feel like other builds besides power variants bring value to a group. When that does happen, though, players complain about the alternative being over-powered as if they never realized any build not based on the power tree has a use.

Not having a holy trinity of professions should not mean any profession cannot be tuned to fit one of those roles in team play. Your trait tree is supposed to, in theory, allow you to fit any role provided you give up other roles in exchange. The reality is not so black and white with professions having their own native potential but that was one reason I liked Necromancer early after release: It was pretty flexible compared to other professions, then.

striker.3704:

spoj.9672:

Also other classes will be applying low damage short duration bleeds through traits which will constantly prevent the necro from apply 25 stacks of decent damaging bleeds.

Actually, it’s been proven time and again that condition stacks with higher damage take priority over lower damage condition stacks. (either way someone losses out on DPS though)

This is kind of true, its not as simple as whoever has more condition dmg get priority but its not a first come first serve either. Ill look for the exact calculation but im not a math guy lol

Basically it takes condition damage and duration into account when adding new bleeds and giving priority, it then weighs it against the amount of time the current bleeds have left.

The big thing everyone is forgetting when comparing conditions to power is that conditions don’t have a pure DPS attribute set. Direct damage has a pure DPS set in Berserker, and Hybrid has a pure DPS set in Rampager, but condis get no equivalent. Because of this, conditions will ultimately always do less damage than a berserker and hybrid builds.

The more accurate comparison is between things like Knights, Valkyrie, Cavalier, and other sets that offer offensive and defensive stats. In this tier of equipment, we’ll find that condition damage is quite good for what you get to use it: enough defense to actually matter, an offense that goes right through enemy armor/protection/weakness, an access to very wide AoE damage, and in the necromancer’s case the ability to multiply other people’s conditions, except with your own malice.

So, if you want to compare berserker/rampager to other condition sets, you’ll have to bring up the durability increase that condi amulets bring. One of the reasons why used a condi set on my thief for so long is because the vitality from carrion meant that I wasn’t one-shot anymore. Survivability only indirectly contributes to DPS, but given that many players can’t do things in pure DPS gear, I wouldn’t force them to put something on that will only get them killed.

Though I do think people undersell the strength of hybrid sets.

kwlam.3495:

Depends on the PvE situation really and your team possibly. I have tried epidemic on a non-condition specced necro and it was fuuunnnn =P

That’s the best part of that skill, you don’t even need to be condition specced to use Epidemic. You’re just spreading around what’s already there. And whether the conditions on a target are burn, bleed, torment or weakness, vuln, and chill, spreading them will help everyone.