Guild Wars 2

A quote from Jon Peters (Game Design Lead):

“Some big takeaways for the future. We want control builds and condition builds to have more of a place in high end PvE. We want all profession build diversity to continue to increase, which we will do through more trait and skill work. We want to continue to more clearly define the play styles of the professions. We want to make the combat in Guild Wars 2 better for every single person playing.”
- https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Updated-Nov-6th/page/35

How do you see this working out for the condi Necro in PvE?

I really can’t see how they could improve condition builds in PvE without doing something about the condition cap! This is a hint? Or have they found another way?

Condition necro will need huge defiant/unshakable revamp to work. You can see they “want to” do a lot of things. But from the current route GW2 is heading (Balance for pvp, content for pve), balancing like that is probably in a rather lower piority in pve. I don’t see it in any near future.

Condition cap is ofc another problem. Again, that involves a technical problem that is even harder to solve than the defiant, which is just mechanics design change. So I would expect, if they ever decided to change these, the defiant change to come first.

Ghostextechnica.3270:

How do you see this working out for the condi Necro in PvE?

I really can’t see how they could improve condition builds in PvE without doing something about the condition cap! This is a hint? Or have they found another way?

Condition cap could potentially be worked around (giving the higher level mobs a higher condition cap, removing it for them, or giving individual caps on those mobs), but I don’t see that happening right away, especially because of, say, Epidemic (as much fun as it’d be to Epidemic 50 bleeds…)

However, the condition cap is not what kills condition builds in PvE. It is an issue, yes, but only when you have 2-3 condition users in the group that center around the same things (Mesmers and Engineers, for example, tend to have very few bleed stacks, but focus on other conditions).

The problem is multi fold.
1) My 1500 condi-damage conditions can get overridden by the 100 condi-damage Ele’s, or Guardians. This is a big issue because those classes in specific have passive conditions that they can’t not apply, and then my 900 DPS burning just got turned into a 400 DPS burning.
2) Conditions overall suffer from lower DPS, worse high-end scaling, and lack of “buff-ability”. Power scales the best with full investment, and in PvE there isn’t much of a downside to being full zerker. Also, the majority of buffs to damage have to deal with direct damage, boosting it even higher.
3) There is a ton of “condi hate” in PvE. Condition removal, debuffs to application, bosses having the majority of their eHP in HP and not armor, structures in general. There are quite a few mechanics to work against conditions, and relatively few against power.
4) Boons can generally do the exact same thing as conditions, but better, more reliably, with higher uptime, and almost no downsides. Just look at Protection vs Weakness.

They really need to address these problems (and they somewhat have in the newer PvE designs) before conditions are on-par with power, even if groups will be limited to 1-2 condition players each.

^ Wow that sums it up perfectly.

I really hope the devs/game designers read the above.

Easy fix would be to give us our own individual condi stacks.

Would be nice to see condi & boons not overwrite stronger/longer versions.

Both of these seem to have the argument of too much server load. Which is weird as other games seem to handle this, and there seems to be more on the fly calculations for direct damage.

The other thing I heard bounced around, is having condi’s do some direct dam, if already at cap. I think this would be very tricky to scale to be fair. (But this could fix world events not giving people credit as they could do enough damage to trigger rewards)

Other major issues, are ‘crit immune’ and ‘mark immune’ things like world boss’s. Extra damage to target modifiers not affecting conditions, like vuln. (Also power benefiting from crit & crit dam, condi just condi)

I also think, that our condi manipulation role has been removed. (Could we at least get Putrid Mark bug to not be a tool tip fix, and let it be 5 off us, 3 off allies in mark)
The other big problem with this, is the amount of passive condi removal. The fun of getting the group covered in condi’s, then throwing them all back, doesn’t work if we A) Can’t anymore They were accidentally removed passively by others.

I suggest:

• Condition damage stacks inflicted beyond the maxstacklimit (usually 25) is converted to direct damage.
• On structures, set the maxstacklimit to 0.

There would be scaling factor(s) involved in the conversion of condition dmg to direct dmg so that, for example, a big 30-sec bleed doesn’t convert into a massive instant damage burst.

In pve, defiant buff and 25 stack limit are the main problems for every condition build of every class. They have to allow condition skills to deal damage after 25 stack limit somehow, or the problem can’t be solved. Also condition based skills have to deal damage to structures, staff marks need to be triggerable by structures along with that.

I’m hearing a lot of “we want to address control and condition builds”, but I’m not hearing a lot of specifics. This is a core balance issue with the combat, yet since launch we’ve seen our necro class become worse and worse as they persistently balance our class for pvp. Lets be perfectly honest here, while GW2 is a very fun game, there are a ton of problems with the core combat that have remained unaddressed since launch. And some of those issues seem to be issues that have carried over from GW1. That kind of boggles my mind, that we’d see some of the same problems back from GW1:

• DPS being overpowered
• Classes having unequal access to invulnerability abilities
• Degen being inferior to direct damage
• Life stealing being under powered

^ All of the above were problems in GW1. And they never got fixed.

Honestly, i dont care if condis are a viable damage source in pve, i just want em to be useful enough to be worth it… i barely touch my rampager gear anymore and the only 2 condis i see are immob chill and vuln (oh and sometimes cripple from my WH5 but it doesnt really do anything since the target is already permachilled).
Life siphon sustain/damage negation and control are the things id rather see ramped up on necro, there at least we got good base concepts (as in more aggression = more survival and chill fear pull or immob the crap out of mobs).

Wait a sec:
A quote from Jon Peters (Game Design Lead):

“Some big takeaways for the future. We want control builds and condition builds to have more of a place in high end PvE. We want all profession build diversity to continue to increase, which we will do through more trait and skill work. We want to continue to more clearly define the play styles of the professions. We want to make the combat in Guild Wars 2 better for every single person playing.”

When he previously said:
We brought down some of the raw DPS conditions that necromancer enjoys, while also maintaining their pressure and sustain elements.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/first#post3133116

So he change his mind about bringing down raw DPS conditions?

The second quote is 100% about PvP, which is where 80% of balance decisions happen. PvP balance generally drives the overall game balance.

Bhawb.7408:

Ghostextechnica.3270:

How do you see this working out for the condi Necro in PvE?

I really can’t see how they could improve condition builds in PvE without doing something about the condition cap! This is a hint? Or have they found another way?

However, the condition cap is not what kills condition builds in PvE. It is an issue, yes, but only when you have 2-3 condition users in the group that center around the same things (Mesmers and Engineers, for example, tend to have very few bleed stacks, but focus on other conditions).

Actually, zerk grenade engineers can easily self sustain 15-20 stacks of bleed while cond specs easily do 25. Mesmers also take up tons of bleed slots because of the trait Sharper Images, which makes each crit done by a phantasm also proc a bleed. This means that the current PvE meta mesmers which use sword pistol / focus ramp up bleeds extremely quickly… and that’s just zerk build. Oh and phantasms have perma fury so they will crit ALOT.

So really the condition cap is a huge issue. 1 zerker mesmer or grenade engineer greatly diminishes a condition user in the same group as them.

I also think that they have to remove our dependency to conditions by adding more power build options, more power traits, more power based utilities and more ranged and ranged-aoe power weapons. Even if they fix condi builds for pve, conditions will still be bad against crowded zergs in wvw. wvw must be held seperately for balancing.

I speck condi and sustain in wvw and speck power/crit damage in PvE. Sure it cost me a ton for the ascended accessories and armor/runes not to mention the respect cost but at least I don’t have to worry bout having any pesky alts.

/sarcasm

Another “easy” fix: Globally halve durations on damaging conditions; but double their damage coefficients. Makes it both easier to stay under the stack cap and keep up with power burst damage, as well as better avoids damage overwrites by dealing it faster and dropping off.

Also devs should remove the passive bleed activation (minor traits, non-power based skills), so the “dedicated” condi classes get a bit more space in smaller fight IF they spec for condi.
Also traits / skills like Warriors Attack of Opportonuty should be a great to spread around classes, so the passive extra dmg from condi characters would be wellcomed. We already have something with guardians, they get bonus against burning targets, but they already can keep up perma burning, so its not the best example.
Imagine if Mesmers would deal less confusion (just an example, dont get mad), but get a bonus from a trait if the target has confusion on them (in power build of course), Engies would be more wellcomed in groups since they apply vulnerability, bleed, poison and all kind of stuff with no effort.
Currently the only condi you want on your enemy is vulnerability, but it can be capped on bosses in seconds and sustain it for a relatively long time.

edit: Oh i forgot Target the weak … I dont feel its fair that we need 5 conditions on the target to get a 10% damage bonus, while others only need bleed / burning, which happens every time you look on a boss with any group.

I think apart from fixing conditions, the balance team needs to start actually playing a PVE necromancer (that would help), and they need to realize that there are other builds than condition builds. The last couple of patches they’ve been nerfing dozens of skills, just to fix Dhuumfire (without actually touching the skill that is causing all the trouble). In this process, they’ve really damaged the potential of other builds. They need to make the other traits and skills more useful, rather than focusing so much on an imbalance they created themselves by adding Dhuumfire. Because right now there aren’t that many PVE builds left that are worth anything.

I’ve currently specced my necromancer towards full toughness, just to get some passable staying power out of our class. But it’s when you invest heavily in toughness, that you start to see just how poorly toughness scales in high end PVE. It’s no wonder that people focus on zerker so much. PVE damage is out of control.

A lot of champions in PVE do so much damage, that even with high toughness it’s almost an instant kill (or instant downed). There’s also one really big bug in the game’s combat that they really need to address, and that’s the problem of some attacks hitting way more than they should. This causes one attack that already does a lot of damage, to hit like 6 times in one second. There’s lots of enemies that are guilty of this bug, and it has got to be addressed. They should simply add a rule that prevents some monster skills from dealing the same damage twice in a row.

I personally think the cap should stay as it is. The only issue is for world bosses. The problem lies in potential dps, overwriting of higher condi stacks and ramp up time. One of the simplest ways to improve conditions in pve is too boost condi damage scaling by quite a lot. It would force teams to take 1 condi spec for the superior dps. The tradeoff would still be ramp up time and a condi cap so it would be balanced.

spoj.9672:

I personally think the cap should stay as it is. The only issue is for world bosses.

You’re wrong. Take any boss in the game, and you can easily hit the condition cap with 2 or 3 people. They really just need to redesign this system, or find a clever solution to the cap that is in place now. The cap will always limit damage potential, and that is one of the core reasons why condition damage is inferior, and always will be.

spoj.9672:

One of the simplest ways to improve conditions in pve is too boost condi damage scaling by quite a lot. It would force teams to take 1 condi spec for the superior dps.

That’s simply exchanging one imbalance for another. If you scale condition damage up, everyone will go full condition damage instead of DPS. Besides, this still does not address the problem of the cap, or the imbalance regarding boss resistance to conditions.

spoj.9672:

The tradeoff would still be ramp up time and a condi cap so it would be balanced.

There’s more holding condition builds back than just the ramp up time and the cap. All bosses have condition immunities to some degree, and condition resistance. All bosses also have Defiant and Unshakeable, rendering the fear condition useless. And then there’s also the problem of bosses having way more health than they have armor. Why is this a problem you may ask?

Condition damage negates armor. It’s one of the reasons one might want to use conditions. But in high end PVE, mobs and bosses mostly just get their health pool increased, and thus this advantage of armor negation is irrelevant. The impact of armor is too subtle in the game. That goes for our foes, but also for the players. You can pack a ton of toughness, and still receive enough damage to be downed in one hit, regardless of your armor. The system is not balanced. If armor on bosses was a bigger deal than their health pool currently is, condition damage would find a place in high end PVE.

Another problem is that condition damage relies on damage over time. Which means that anyone using such a build needs to stay alive long enough for the conditions to do their work. And in high end PVE, staying alive is a bit of a problem. Especially the necromancer is lacking in proper defense to deal with the out-of-control damage in PVE, and like I said, toughness isn’t effective enough. Defiant/Unshakeable renders our control skills useless, thus further limiting our defense. This is simply a huge oversight on behalf of the designers.

Yes the immunities are issues but the cap isnt an issue. You shouldnt be taking 2 or more condi specced players. Its just like in any other mmo, you dont take more tanks/healers than you need, it would be counter productive. If condi damage was higher it wouldnt create a new imbalance, it would simply shift the organised groups into building differently for different dungeons. Dungeons with lots of condi immunity would remain zerker only, others would take a condi spec. Theres nothing wrong with having some dungeons/encounters being anti condition. Surely you can agree a meta with 1 condi and 4 zerkers is better than 5 zerkers?

A group should be allowed to take as many condi user as they want without gimping themselves the same as they can go all zerker right now if they desire to.

spoj.9672:

Yes the immunities are issues but the cap isnt an issue. You shouldnt be taking 2 or more condi specced players. Its just like in any other mmo, you dont take more tanks/healers than you need, it would be counter productive. If condi damage was higher it wouldnt create a new imbalance, it would simply shift the organised groups into building differently for different dungeons. Dungeons with lots of condi immunity would remain zerker only, others would take a condi spec. Theres nothing wrong with having some dungeons/encounters being anti condition. Surely you can agree a meta with 1 condi and 4 zerkers is better than 5 zerkers?

I do not agree.
In your example it is ok to have four Berserkers doing direct damage.
Why can we not have four condition characters?

Imagine the outrage (justifiable) if a target got a ‘direct damage shield’ buff every time it took a certain amount of direct DPS…. and and all direct damage characters did 30% or less damage until the buff wore off. That is what is currently happening with condition characters in PVE (and in WvW and PvP if we start talking about burning and the damage component of poison).

The game has as many classes and builds for condition as direct damage.
The condition stack limit on the target hurts build and group diversity.

Other MMOs do not have this issue… and ArenaNet has acknowledged this is an issue in forum posts going back to October 2012.

It really must be fixed.

Ulari

spoj.9672:

Surely you can agree a meta with 1 condi and 4 zerkers is better than 5 zerkers?

That’s kind of like saying getting hit in the head with a bat is better than getting hit in the head with a brick. It’s both bad. The game should support all builds equally. Zerker should not be superior to everything else, and the game should not promote 4 zerker or 5 zerker groups. The game currently has bosses that purposefully discourage all condition builds, both in dungeons and in the open world.

Its fine if a boss is stronger than normal enemies in the game, but it’s not fine if not all builds and classes face the same challenge. Right now they are not on equal footing. Necromancers are the worst off in this regard, because control and condition are the core game play of our class. Boss/champion immunities and resistances punish that specifically, but DPS builds don’t have this obstacle. It’s unfair, and unless addressed, this will destroy the PVE game in the long run. When ever such a blatant unbalance is left unfixed for too long, more and more players adapt to that unbalance. Before long players simply give up on condition damage in PVE. It’s not like we’re making this up, the same thing happened in Guild Wars 1.

In Guild Wars 1 there was a big issue with energy denial and mesmers. While mesmers were quite useful in pvp, in PVE monsters had unbalanced amounts of energy, and energy regen, along with incredibly fast skill activations. That, combined with a lack of good aoe skills, meant that mesmers were basically avoided for dungeons for years. It wasn’t until long after the release of Eye of the North, that changes were finally made to the Panic skill and some others, to allow mesmers to have a roll in high end PVE dungeons. A change that was way overdue. The game also had an unbalance regarding degen builds, again because enemies had unbalanced amounts of health and health regeneration, making degen ineffective. But that never got fixed.

When ever you make exceptions to your own combat system and break your own rules, you bring unbalance into your game. Of course to make PVE monsters a bit of a challenge, some cheating with the statistics is usually needed, but it needs to affect all classes equally. You can’t make bosses immune to a crucial game mechanic (control skills) when one class relies on it heavily and others don’t. You also can’t make bosses immune or resistant to conditions, and have a very low condition cap, if DPS isn’t treated equally. That destroys the balance of the game.

Good post Mad Queen.

U´re right, i hope there will be a chance to make min/maxed condition builds nearly equal to others. But this is hard to do.

Combos and control have not rly a good role in current PvE too. Mightstacking ok…but others? There effect´s are often bad in PvE.
They are weak (poison on enemys which don´t heal themselfs) and they don´t stack (burning enemy is burning..they can´t burn more).

Im not saying there isnt a problem. I just think the cap is fine. Its the other issues surrounding conditions and control which need to be addressed. Removing the cap can just as easily imbalance the game.

I like the idea of damage that is pushed off being converted to direct damage.
New fotm: group of necros spamming one-hit epidemics off bleeding capped targets kitten

I’d like to see more damage being frontloaded. Either in the direct damage part, or have bleedings tick for more damage early on and then get weaker as they last, so it’s not as bad to have the last seconds of a bleeding be pushed off.
Another approach is to get rid of the unavoidable 2 second bleeding procs for berserker specs. So useless.
Or increase damage dramatically and adjust the number of stacks per attack accordingly.
Or implement a burning priority based on condition damage.

spoj.9672:

Surely you can agree a meta with 1 condi and 4 zerkers is better than 5 zerkers?

Not a strawman at all

I think the biggest issues that need to be addressed in order of importance are:

1. Condition cap- condition users will always be less desirable until they stop gimping themselves

2. Defiant/unshakeable- all the condition immunity, condition cleanses, useless fear, they all reduce the effectivness of condition users while there is no penalty for direct damage users.

3. Gear scaling. Going from full exotic to full ascended armor gives zerkers a ~17% dmg increase. Going from full exotic to full ascended gives rabid users a 5.1% dmg increase. This alone completely makes condition users worthless once ascended armor comes out.

4. Condition overrides- my 900dps burn being replaced by a 400dps burn is just nonsense. conditions should be unique to the applier.

Bawi.9541:

spoj.9672:

Surely you can agree a meta with 1 condi and 4 zerkers is better than 5 zerkers?

Not a strawman at all

Doesnt make it any less true though.

spoj.9672:

Bawi.9541:

spoj.9672:

Surely you can agree a meta with 1 condi and 4 zerkers is better than 5 zerkers?

Not a strawman at all

Doesnt make it any less true though.

which is why i could see people falling for it.
Still fails to offer a reason why zerker should be stackable without drawbacks, with condis having to justify wanting a single slot in a group

Think of it this way. You can only cut someone so much so they bleed out at a certain rate. But you can beat them with clubs as much as you want and each blow will do more damage. Cutting the same place multiple times isnt going to make it bleed much more, theres a maximum rate at which someone can bleed out.

I feel really creepy saying this xD.

As far as solutions go, I don’t know about making conditions do direct damage if the cap has been hit. It’s the same issue with the idea of having stronger conditions overwrite weaker ones. While it’s an improvement – it’s still a damage reduction andpeople won’t be doing the same damage they can do solo.

If you have 5 direct damage builds – everyone will be doing 100% of the damage they can do when soloing (and probably more like 120% with group buffs). As a team, 5 direct damage builds are actually a lot stronger than 5 solo people. This makes grouping fun and beneficial!

If you have 5 condition builds (or even just 2!) – everyone will be doing significantly less than the damage they can do when soloing. Even losing the ‘two second bleed on hits’ due to the cap is a reduction in damage vs being solo. Being in a team actually reduces everyone’s effectiveness and is a pretty negative experience (with people thinking “gah I wish X other condi classes weren’t here”).

TheAgedGnome.7520:

I suggest:

• Condition damage stacks inflicted beyond the maxstacklimit (usually 25) is converted to direct damage.
• On structures, set the maxstacklimit to 0.

There would be scaling factor(s) involved in the conversion of condition dmg to direct dmg so that, for example, a big 30-sec bleed doesn’t convert into a massive instant damage burst.

There’s huge issues with that tho. As you say, if it’s full duration to instant. It’s a huge boost over direct dam.
If it’s only ‘some damage’, that’s not much of a fix. Tho you may allow you to finally get credit in world events. Condi users will sill be way behind in usefulness. As it’s still reduced damage, on a stat that doesn’t benefit from crit % or crit dam.
This will also add more calculations per attack, which seems to be the reasoning why we don’t just get our own stacks anyway.

That is also just a messy fix for structures/objects. They still wont trigger marks, or crits. Leaving P/T/V gear far ahead. Also stopping specs that use crits from working, from DumbFire to Guards giving others might, to many class’s getting vigor.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I think apart from fixing conditions, the balance team needs to start actually playing a PVE necromancer (that would help), and they need to realize that there are other builds than condition builds. The last couple of patches they’ve been nerfing dozens of skills, just to fix Dhuumfire (without actually touching the skill that is causing all the trouble). In this process, they’ve really damaged the potential of other builds. They need to make the other traits and skills more useful, rather than focusing so much on an imbalance they created themselves by adding Dhuumfire. Because right now there aren’t that many PVE builds left that are worth anything.

I’ve currently specced my necromancer towards full toughness, just to get some passable staying power out of our class. But it’s when you invest heavily in toughness, that you start to see just how poorly toughness scales in high end PVE. It’s no wonder that people focus on zerker so much. PVE damage is out of control.

A lot of champions in PVE do so much damage, that even with high toughness it’s almost an instant kill (or instant downed). There’s also one really big bug in the game’s combat that they really need to address, and that’s the problem of some attacks hitting way more than they should. This causes one attack that already does a lot of damage, to hit like 6 times in one second. There’s lots of enemies that are guilty of this bug, and it has got to be addressed. They should simply add a rule that prevents some monster skills from dealing the same damage twice in a row.

Its not a monster but, its a hitbox detection bug, see every time you move, the data from you needs to get registered on the servers and back, so if you lets say have a increased hitbox or move in the same direction as a damage dealing wave/pulse skill, it detects you in it multiple times, for example the tequatl shockwaves while on base dealing 5k (2k if you got stability to not get the cc portion hit you up for the stronger wave hit), it might just hit you for oh i dont know 38k damage while in lich form because you moved a tiny bit back out of the fingers of taco aoe…

Same reason why fiery greatsword rush, whirlwind, axe trail thing, etc are all used on objects untargeted, you can force the same thing by stacking the aoes ontop of eachother instead of the server stacking your hitbox trough the different aoes.
They should apply some of the thief and well/trap rules to most skills, them only being able to hit a person once pre second unless its a channel (so like 100b, life transfer, etc) that are designed as “small” multi hits with a target limit.

There’s multiple reasons I suggested halving base duration while boosting the intensity coefficient.

Having the stacks end in half the time means it is harder to cap out in the first place even with multiple people, and because the cond damage is happening in a shorter window it is less likely to get overwritten by another source as well.

It also technically lessens the effect that +/- % cond duration effect stacking has on game play because of the lower base duration available to manipulate.

Higher dps conditions also means more dps to slip in before a cleanse negates the damage potential, bringing more parity between a power-crit build and an offensive condition spec.

I have been thinking about this problem for a while and I came up with 2 solutions:
1. Give all classes their own condition to replace bleeds. This condition would have the same damage as bleeds and only be triggered by that classes skills/traits. Sigils would still provide bleeds. Bleeds seem to be the main thing that immediately gets to 25 stacks.
2. Critical conditions that hit for immediate damage. Hear me out before you flame…This would only trigger once something gets to 25 stacks. So, if bleeds are at 25 stacks and you cause a bleed, you have a 50% chance to cause a critical condition that does all your DoT damage for that bleed instantly. A 50% chance to trigger a crit means if you have 50% crit chance, then you have a 50% chance of that 50% chance triggering a critical bleed (25% effective chance). This would work probably work best if they implemented class specific conditions as well. It would much harder to get to 25 bleed stacks if the only way you could cause it was by sigils.
3. Make burning affect objects…objects don’t bleed, can’t be poisoned, tormented, vulnd, feared, etc. Everything burns.

Yes, vulnerability gets to 25 stacks, but PVE would be too easy if you could stack vuln to 150 and all damage was increased by 150%…
As far as duration conditions go, such as Burning and Poison, idk.
Thoughts?

Bhawb.7408:

Condition cap could potentially be worked around (giving the higher level mobs a higher condition cap, removing it for them, or giving individual caps on those mobs), but I don’t see that happening right away, especially because of, say, Epidemic (as much fun as it’d be to Epidemic 50 bleeds…)

However, the condition cap is not what kills condition builds in PvE. It is an issue, yes, but only when you have 2-3 condition users in the group that center around the same things (Mesmers and Engineers, for example, tend to have very few bleed stacks, but focus on other conditions).

The problem is multi fold.
1) My 1500 condi-damage conditions can get overridden by the 100 condi-damage Ele’s, or Guardians. This is a big issue because those classes in specific have passive conditions that they can’t not apply, and then my 900 DPS burning just got turned into a 400 DPS burning.
2) Conditions overall suffer from lower DPS, worse high-end scaling, and lack of “buff-ability”. Power scales the best with full investment, and in PvE there isn’t much of a downside to being full zerker. Also, the majority of buffs to damage have to deal with direct damage, boosting it even higher.
3) There is a ton of “condi hate” in PvE. Condition removal, debuffs to application, bosses having the majority of their eHP in HP and not armor, structures in general. There are quite a few mechanics to work against conditions, and relatively few against power.
4) Boons can generally do the exact same thing as conditions, but better, more reliably, with higher uptime, and almost no downsides. Just look at Protection vs Weakness.

They really need to address these problems (and they somewhat have in the newer PvE designs) before conditions are on-par with power, even if groups will be limited to 1-2 condition players each.

Great post.

I think bleed cap has to go, though. If Epidemic is what’s keeping that issue for all classes, then Epidemic needs to be reworked.

I don’t think it’s epidemic that is doing the harm. Its really easy to hit the bleed cap without epidemic. Bleeding and vulnerability are simply too easy to stack, and their effects are rather poor at lower quantities of stacks (or at least, not as noticeable as DPS is against high health targets). Perhaps they could reduce the quantity of conditions being thrown around, and increase their effects. For example, instead of Lich form causing 8 stacks of vulnerability, why not simply 1 or 2, and make the effect stronger?

But even with such a change, at any group event you still hit the condition cap. All it takes it 25 players using the same condition, or about 12 players using the same condition twice. 25 simply isn’t a whole lot. Any decent attempt at Tequatl has about 60 players attacking him, and Tequatl even counts as a structure. What they need to do is come up with a system that works with small and gigantic numbers of players. This is an MMO after all.

I can why vulnerability should max out at 25. It would be pretty ridiculous if vun stacked infinitely – the new meta for PvE would just be 5 people autoattacking with weapons that apply vun until everyone is doing 99,999 per hit.

However the damage-based conditions really need to stack so everyone can at the very least do 100% of the damage they can do when soloing.

Ghostextechnica.3270:

… the damage-based conditions really need to stack so everyone can at the very least do 100% of the damage they can do when soloing.

This!

If I can do 1,000 (or 10,000) DPS with conditions when solo, I should also be able to do 1,000 (or 10,000) DPS in a group.

This is not broken, it is not OP… it is the exact same as…

If I can do 1,000 (or 10,000) DPS with direct damage when solo, I should also be able to do 1,000 (or 10,000) DPS in a group.

Vulnerability stacking to 25 on the target is fine.
Characters not being able to place damaging conditions on the target is not fine.

Ulari

The least they could do is to make 25 stacks personal, so let’s say with 2 condimancers one couldn’t Epidemic 47 stacks of bleed AoE twice – that would probably be a serious overkill.
That said I completely agree with direct-condition comparison – damage is damage and since nobody restricts 30 zerkers fighting a champ, condition builds shouldn’t be restricted too.

Only Fire and Poison are needing a stack for each player.
Weakness/Chill and so not.
Bleeding/Torment/Confusion could get increased stacklimit 50 or more for example.

If you convert conditions to direct damage they aren’t really conditions anymore. Defiant on bosses has a good reason because bosses have to be kinda imune to cc otherwise 2-3 people would permastun and the rest afk auto until they died or whatever.

If a boss is immune to CC and my Terrormancer can not damage it with fear… that is fine. It is true when I am solo and it is true when I am in group. It is a decision the devs made when they built the boss or when they made the damage fear inflicts part of the CC that the boss is immune to.

Personally, I would like some variety on bosses… so that some have insane armor so conditions are better than direct damage, and some cleanse so that conditions are worse, etc. But this is a pipe dream at the moment, because…

Until several condition characters in a group can all apply their conditions to the boss, the above conversation is meaningless.

The condition cap must be fixed for the basic damaging conditions: bleeding, burning, torment, confusion, poison (the damage portion).

Ulari

If the condition cap was removed for dps conditions I would be totally happy for epidemic to only apply to self-applied conditions.

(to be honest, if you are specced for +condition damage this would be better than spreading other people’s incidental ones anyway)

Epidemic could even be capped to spread only 25 conditions.

Ghostextechnica.3270:

(to be honest, if you are specced for +condition damage this would be better than spreading other people’s incidental ones anyway)

Spread conditions use your condition damage.

Jon Peters also indicated that a condition cap fix was pending nine months ago; I imagine that he will be making similar assurances during summer 2014.

HappyHubris.1096:

Jon Peters also indicated that a condition cap fix was pending nine months ago; I imagine that he will be making similar assurances during summer 2014.

Soon™

robertul.3679:

Defiant on bosses has a good reason because bosses have to be kinda imune to cc otherwise 2-3 people would permastun and the rest afk auto until they died or whatever.

Defiant has a good reason to be there, but it is a bad solution to the problem. Sure, stunlocking a boss trivializes any boss battle. But completely removing the control ability from every boss battle is not the solution to that. You break your own combat system by making bosses immune to core aspects of the combat system.

What they need to do, is implement a mechanic that prevents anyone from stunlocking anyone. That includes the stunlocking of players! I suggest the following:

When ever a boss is hit by a control skill, he receives a boon that gives a few seconds of CC immunity, which stacks if he keeps getting hit by more control skills. This boon can also be removed with boon removal skills, but it will normally run out after 2 or 3 seconds. They should also add this mechanic to players, in a weakened variant (maybe make it 1 second of stun immunity).

Ghostextechnica.3270:

I can why vulnerability should max out at 25. It would be pretty ridiculous if vun stacked infinitely – the new meta for PvE would just be 5 people autoattacking with weapons that apply vun until everyone is doing 99,999 per hit.

However the damage-based conditions really need to stack so everyone can at the very least do 100% of the damage they can do when soloing.

I think invulnerability still needs to be changed. It stacks up to 25 way too easily, and the effect is very minor. I never feel like I’m contributing much when I’m applying vulnerability to an enemy. Maybe vulnerability should be directly linked to the player, and drastically increase the damage done to that enemy. So every player has their own personal stack of vulnerability on an enemy, and it only boosts the damage for the player that owns those stacks. No more of stacking your vulnerability on top of someone elses.

Also, give enemies more armor rather than health, and make vulnerability matter more during a battle.

Or also just design boss fights to not just be single massive HP punching-bags in the first place; which would help a lot with the chain CC issue.

Like give then stunbreaks which have a cooldown.

Maybe a “call for help/reinforcements” ability when chain stunned, etc.

Almost anything would be better than arbitrary immunity.

Vulnerability is fine. It only stacks up nicely in dungeons with a decent group. Its actually pretty hard to get sustained 25 vuln with unshakeable. If you make it individual you ruin another aspect of debuff support and team synergy. This is another reason why I dont think bleed cap should be removed. You start to make things look messy and how would traits like target the weak work on a boss that has 3 sets of bleed stacks.