Guild Wars 2

I agree for all the reasons mentioned on why there are caps to how much a condition will stack on a single target.

Unfortunately, conditions have been complete crap since beta, then they where not fixed since release and Anet even acknowledges that they get cleared to easy in PvP/WvW, mechanically in PvE they’re hindered if more than one-two sources are putting them on and Power damage is currently the meta for pretty much anyone who wants to get anywhere.

Just how it is, but they have all their man-hours invested in making PvE events so you’ll buy gems, than actually rectifying something that actually cripples entire class spec lines… and when you’re pretty much a one-trick pony like the necro that seems to be based entirely around conditions (even if you don’t want anything to do with them!), then you’re even further up that creek without a paddle.

They have completely different teams for PvE events and PvP balance, so that has nothing to do with it. I think it is more that ANet wants to be very careful, it is much easier to slowly buff/nerf things into proper balance over time, than if they overreact too quickly and screw stuff up; its something I imagine they learned from GW1 and also Blizzard (I’m sure other ones as well).

Andele.1306:

Despite my hate for some of Bhawbs logical gymnastics that would break the spine of every being alive, he was actually right here because direct damage does have a cap, its called the armor of the boss and crit chance. Good exaple is Claw of Jormag who while not weakned by imafirinmahlazor asura cannons takes about 40% of normal direct damage while still taking full condition damage.

Except he’s not right at all, because what you have just described is not a cap at all. Not only is your example not relevant to most enemies, it does not hard cap absolute direct damage to 3.75k damage per second in the absolute BEST of possible situations. In reality, most bleed stacks, especially in larger fights will not be taken up by those with the most condition damage. This limits damage far below it’s maximum potential through bleeds.

Your described limit reduces potential damage individually.
Let me show everyone in this thread an example of what that means:

(These individual damage values will be nigh impossible, at least for Necro, I’m not as familiar with PvE max stat Warriors, but an extreme case helps explain my point)

Individually:

• Warrior capable of delivering 4,000 damage per second hits your boss for 3,200 per second.
• Necromancer capable of 25, 150 damage bleed stacks hits your boss for 3,750 per second.

In groups:

• 10 Warriors capable of delivering 4,000 damage per second hit your boss for 32,000 per second total.
• 10 Necromancers capable of 25, 150 damage bleed stacks hit your boss for 3,750 per second total.

For those who missed it, 10 necromancers do the same damage as one. This is the problem and this is what we are complaining about.

Plus, does anyone honestly think it’s possible for one player to constantly maintain 25 stacks of bleed…?

Brew why do you always count only the bleed damage are you not attacking with direct damage at the same time? You are using isolated mathematical situations and overlooking the simplest and most obvious flaw to your math.

If you only did bleed damage during that time than yes you are at a severe disadvantage. The big difference is when those warriors are doing 100 b. that’s all the damage they do. While a necros damage is additive because they are dealing both bleed, burn, poison, and direct.

He is oversimplifying slightly by omitting the direct damage, even though that is a very small part of the overall damage of any condition specced character (wear a full set of TA armor and the scepter direct damage won’t even tickle a target).

So in actuality we may be looking at something like:
- warriors: 3.200 × 10 = 32.000
- necros: 1000 × 10 + 3,750 = 13,750

Although the truth is even worse in this situation since GS warriors will normally take 20 in arms giving them a 33% on crit chance to bleed, or in other words: chance to push off a necro’s bleed dropping his dps even lower.

The point still stands though that direct damage while effected by mitigation has no cap (becoming more valuable with every player that hits the target).
The lack of mitigation for conditions does not make up for the fact as little as 2 condition specced players can reach the cap and negate/lose thousands of dps.

Bas.7406:

Brew why do you always count only the bleed damage are you not attacking with direct damage at the same time? You are using isolated mathematical situations and overlooking the simplest and most obvious flaw to your math.

Because the issue is extremely simple yet so many have trouble comprehending it. I wanted to present it extremely clearly. Just as I added no bleed or minor additional damage source for the Warrior example, I didn’t include dd for the Necro example. I also assumed that a single Necro was reaching 25 bleed stacks, this is nigh impossible.
In reality, a condition necro will do an additional ~300 damage per second as direct damage.

Again using my extreme case:
Individually:

• Warrior capable of delivering 4,000 damage per second hits your boss for 3,200 per second.
• Necromancer capable of 25, 150 damage bleed stacks, (plus 300 dd) hits your boss for 3,930 per second.

In groups:

• 10 Warriors capable of delivering 4,000 damage per second hit your boss for 32,000 per second total.
• 10 Necromancers capable of 25, 150 damage bleed stacks (plus 300 dd each) hit your boss for 5,550 per second total.

Bas.7406:

While a necros damage is additive because they are dealing both bleed, burn, poison, and direct.

Lets deal with the bleed issue first since it’s the main one (Only one person can inflict either burn/poison at a time, mate. The burn/poison problem could be a whole other thread)

Bas.7406:

The big difference is when those warriors are doing 100 b. that’s all the damage they do.

You, I and everyone else in this thread know that’s not true.

Snafoo.2869:

So in actuality we may be looking at something like:
- warriors: 3.200 × 10 = 32.000
- necros: 1000 × 10 + 3,750 = 13,750

using the 40% reduction this would be saying a Necro could land dd worth nearly 1700 per second… Perhaps in a power/precision/condition damage build you could get half that per second in dd?

Balancing Epidemic after raising the bleed cap would be easy. Epidemic now transfers a maximum of 25 bleeds. Come on this is easy. Now yes if you have 5 necromancers you could easily spread out 100 bleeds but who runs a group of all necros?

Softspoken.2410:

Ugh, that’s depressing. I assume you had at least two bleeds on there that were really long (+8 seconds at time of Churn) duration too?

All my bleeds are over 13 or so seconds on cast, and BIP is 60. I had at least 10-12 bleeds on the target at the time of the churn over 8 seconds of duration left on the conservative side. By that setup, I should have maintained at least some of the stacks if a priority system was in place.

All 3 eles reported back seeing bleeds that looked like an normal churn amount.

Other conditions issues aside, this system should be updated to at least prioritize higher damage conditions in PVE, so that a single condition necro in a team isn’t getting his conditions pushed off by mesmer/warriors.

Rennoko.5731:

Softspoken.2410:

Ugh, that’s depressing. I assume you had at least two bleeds on there that were really long (+8 seconds at time of Churn) duration too?

All my bleeds are over 13 or so seconds on cast, and BIP is 60. I had at least 10-12 bleeds on the target at the time of the churn over 8 seconds of duration left on the conservative side. By that setup, I should have maintained at least some of the stacks if a priority system was in place.

All 3 eles reported back seeing bleeds that looked like an normal churn amount.

Other conditions issues aside, this system should be updated to at least prioritize higher damage conditions in PVE, so that a single condition necro in a team isn’t getting his conditions pushed off by mesmer/warriors.

Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. I was pretty sure you were competent enough to do so, but I think I just wanted you to be wrong somehow because I dislike that result so much. Thanks a ton for the reply.

I can think of reasons to do it this way. Applying a bleed to a monster always goes through, even at cap, unless 25 bleeds new bleeds are applied within 1 second of yours. But still, if I have 10 points in curses and am not running a condition build, I don’t want my 1 second, 300 condition damage bleed from Barbed Precision to push off someone else’s 5 second, 1100 condition damage bleed.

It really isn’t just a Necromancer issue either, and I hope that the issue comes up for discussion sometime soon. I doubt they’ll spontaneously change it, but I really dislike how it works currently. Replacing the oldest bleeds is okay, although I’d say it can still push super-long bleeds off too soon, but not even checking if new bleeds are worth a spot on the stack is just…

>:[ ArenaNet why you do this.

Just to mention, if a higher bleed cap was possible, condition cleansing abilites would have to give about 5 seconds of condition immunity after the cleanse to balance the gap and Consume conditions would probably count every 5 bleeds as a seperate condition.

Andele.1306:

Just to mention, if a higher bleed cap was possible, condition cleansing abilites would have to give about 5 seconds of condition immunity after the cleanse to balance the gap and Consume conditions would probably count every 5 bleeds as a seperate condition.

Unless ANet made some very poor choices while implementing condition stacking, they should be able to have the stack adjustment only apply to very big mobs (champions or higher) as that is the major sore point. If possible i see no reason why they could not implement it to act similar to the defiant stack, as it is automatically adjusted based on the number of characters taking part in the battle.

Andele.1306:

Just to mention, if a higher bleed cap was possible, condition cleansing abilites would have to give about 5 seconds of condition immunity after the cleanse to balance the gap and Consume conditions would probably count every 5 bleeds as a seperate condition.

No, not at all. This makes no sense.

Consume Conditions counts each type of condition as seperate, this means that 1 bleed or 100 will still count as the same bonus healing. The same logic affects other condition removal, so an ability that removes one condition will remove any number of bleeds and count that as one condition.

digiowl.9620:

stack adjustment only apply to very big mobs (champions or higher) as that is the major sore point.

It may be the major sore point but the issue affects EVERY enemy in the game. Restricting a much needed game wide fix to a PvE niche would be EXTREMELY disappointing and infinitely frustrating.

Brew Pinch.5731:

Consume Conditions counts each type of condition as seperate, this means that 1 bleed or 100 will still count as the same bonus healing. The same logic affects other condition removal, so an ability that removes one condition will remove any number of bleeds and count that as one condition.

Just gave me an interesting thought about condition removal which could be modified over the existing system ‘as-is’.
If any ability removed ‘number of condition stacks’ rather than the actual condition itself?

ie:
Bob Guard is running passive removal on a 5sec cyclic time.
Every 5 sec, Bob will remove ‘one’ condition starting with Crowd-Control and Immobilisers as a priority and moving down towards low-damage conditions such as bleeds.
Bob finds himself loaded up with one 20sec cripple and 3 x stacks of 8sec bleeds.
On this system, at the 5 sec mark it removes the cripple, at 10sec mark it reduces the bleeds to 2 x stacks

Eric Necro is running consume conditions which is an active clearance skill and heal which removes 10 x stacks
Eric has a 2 x stacks of confusion, 10 x stacks of bleeds and an chill
Upon using his skill, it removes the Chill, Confusion and 7 of the 10 stacks of bleeds, he still had 3 stacks of bleeds on him.

As for mobs, there might need to be tables put in place of how many a certain critter will shed over a period of time and which ones it will prioritise removing.
The reason being, this kind of system is one that can scale, so mobs might shed higher amounts if there’s more people whacking away on them and it also makes passive removals valuable, but not essentially ‘better’ than active removals which will remove larger stacks of conditions.

Just a thought anyway.

It would be interesting to have a priority based removal system, the only problem is: who decides what is more important to remove? For example, I always want Consume Conditions to take out poison, otherwise it nerfs itself. Maybe you are running a ranger build with really high regen and bleeds just aren’t that big of an issue, but you really want those immobilizes gone. What if you are playing a bunker class that doesn’t really give a poop about getting stuck standing still, but who really needs that chill taken off.

Anyway, I just don’t think they’d implement a priority system, merely because my priority could be different in different situations, and different builds could want different priorities, giving some minor advantages (and in competitive gaming, which they want to eventually have, its the small things that end up mattering).

As for the x amounts of stacks, we get into the same problem we have with bleeds, to a degree. I obviously want the highest damage bleeds gone first, I could care less if I’m losing 10hp per tick for a bleed from a power build. It just brings in very complicated, imperfect coding to determine what is the “best”, and I think one thing we can agree on, is that people will never agree with each other. Its just best if they leave things as a simple system, even if it might not be ideal for one party or another.

I apologize in advance that I have not read all posts in the thread so forgive me if this has been mentioned. There seems to be a simple way to verify this in. As Rennoko mentioned, he has 100% bleed duration and uses a 60 second (big damage) bleed.

Rennoko, next time you are part of an SMC push, go into the lord room and apply only BiP on the lord and see how many ticks you get. (PvE use dungeon boss)

If the OP is right, you should not get all 60 ticks as BiP should get pushed off rather quickly. If you get the full duration, there may be a prioritization going on behind the scene.

If it is getting pushed off, you might want to join us on the Corrupt Boon train until it gets changed.

MeanMug.2630:

I apologize in advance that I have not read all posts in the thread so forgive me if this has been mentioned. There seems to be a simple way to verify this in. As Rennoko mentioned, he has 100% bleed duration and uses a 60 second (big damage) bleed.

Rennoko, next time you are part of an SMC push, go into the lord room and apply only BiP on the lord and see how many ticks you get. (PvE use dungeon boss)

If the OP is right, you should not get all 60 ticks as BiP should get pushed off rather quickly. If you get the full duration, there may be a prioritization going on behind the scene.

If it is getting pushed off, you might want to join us on the Corrupt Boon train until it gets changed.

That is an interesting idea for testing if duration matters. Unfortunately in SMC, with 40 other people, there is a good chance at least one or two are going to have the same or more condition damage than me (based on might). I may try this on just a tower claimer and see how long it takes for my 2 bleeds to get pushed off. It will be a nice confirming test. I have actually tried this before and the bleed got pushed off rather quickly, but the comment was always, “well maybe someone else just had a stronger bleed on”.

I get the system, and it makes logical sense from an open world PVE massive event sense. Everyone wants to contribute, and just because I have 10 more condition damage than you, shouldn’t mean that I deal ALL the damage and you get no damage.

But for dungeons, where we have a set 5 people, the system should be looked at. I hate to think I would be better off if I told my team NOT to spec into incidental bleeds, but that is most certainly the case.