Guild Wars 2

Ive read alot of talk of Condi build Necro being bad for PVE?

Some people have very strong opinions of this.

Im a full Condi Necro but a pretty open minded player.

Would anyone like to outline the reasoning behind why Condi is so bad for PVE?

Ok you dont burst, or damage objects (as i call them, those things which cant have conditions on them) but would love to see the arguments for why it sucks in PVE?

Would like to have constructive discussion

Stack limit. Even playing with 4 non condi specs they will potentially take some of your stacks. Slow ramp up time. Conditions arent affected by damage modifers and vuln. Direct damage does more, doesnt have an issue of stacking and doesnt take time to build up. Direct damage scales off power, precision and crit damage. Condition damage is just 1 stat.

These are all good points spoj, and I agree with them. Do you feel the damage of say your DG/WH is alot more, hence making the condi build less optimal?

With Epidemic do you feel the AOE potential though is much greater for Condi?

Its interesting that many feel Condi for PVE isnt pulling its weight, yet ANET havent done anything to help balance this out? Should all us Necros be power Necros then :O

Potentially condi aoe is very good sustained damage on necro. The problem is that its only useful for prolonged trash fights. Single target dps is much better with direct damage from dagger warhorn. With a beserker build you can burst aoe with wells and DS and thats usually enough to clear a group of trash mobs in a decentish group. The only places ive found constant epidemic and condition aoe useful is in fractals like ascalon and dredge fractal. But for those Id just use the same build but change into rampager gear and equip a scepter.

Also apparently something is being done to improve conditions in pve in an upcoming patch. Whether it actually works in making speed clear groups take 1 condi class we will see.

Yeah I have had similar thoughts and pretty much to where I got with it.

Hopefully we will see some love come the way of Condi to bring it in to a position where its more on par with zerker builds as it saddens me that so many of the best builds are revolving around zerker style builds.

Boomlinxs.9513:

These are all good points spoj, and I agree with them. Do you feel the damage of say your DG/WH is alot more, hence making the condi build less optimal?

With Epidemic do you feel the AOE potential though is much greater for Condi?

Its interesting that many feel Condi for PVE isnt pulling its weight, yet ANET havent done anything to help balance this out? Should all us Necros be power Necros then :O

Epidemic made feel you god of damage, but you can’t use it on 1-body bosses

Objects take no dam.

Stacks. (Don’t play with others or be penalized for it)

Boss types Immune to Crit.

Modifiers. (Like traits that do more dam to mobs under X situation, that’s direct dam only baby)

Reduced condi duration.

Nurf to fear/weakness/bleed stacks on some things, to ‘balance’ burning in meaning if you don’t take DumbFire, you copped a nurf. (Can’t crit boss’s like Teq, so you can’t even apply burning)

LifeForce gen.

DeathShroud, tho better. Still should stack bleeds on AutoAttack. (Well I guess you use DS as 1 condi dot applyer and quick ’flash’s for buffs. Just seems flatter/less synergy to me.)

Of course, I totally agree with that KnbBlackTemplar.
However not all content is about taking that 1 boss down.
Im not trying to say either pwr or condi is greater but instead understand why condi has a bad rep in PVE.

Nice thoughts Bweaty.

Boomlinxs.9513:

Of course, I totally agree with that KnbBlackTemplar.
However not all content is about taking that 1 boss down.
Im not trying to say either pwr or condi is greater but instead understand why condi has a bad rep in PVE.

Nice thoughts Bweaty.

Still, i love to use condition build and stick with it. Today finish 3rd ascended weapon (scepter, dagger and staff)

@KnbBlackTemplar. Grats! I have Scepter and Warhorn hence my interest in finding how to get the most out of it.

Back to topic though, I have had great success in Dungeons and Fractals doing AOE damage, ok the damage is less than say Zerker theif of warrior for single target such as bosses but isnt AOE an important part of any group make up?

Nemesis demonstrates good theory on the damage numbers a condi necro can put out. Do others feel in terms of what the necro can bring to a party is on par with the popular Zerker builds?

Necro is at the bottom of the list for dungeons and I suppose fractals. Hybrid necro is fairly decent in fractals though. The damage of all classes is pretty well balanced. Its other things which make classes picked over others (group buffs, unique utility and so on). Necro has nothing special that is worth taking in a group.

Slightly off topic there, but I do feel the AOE blinds, condition removal is quite useful.

Back to topic though, its the damage part which is what im interested in this post
(We could talk at length about the utility side of necro )

Yeah necro utility is definately there. Its just other classes have better access to the same stuff and sacrifice less to get it.

I dont think ever going full condi is worth it. The damage is pigeon holed into long duration fights and mostly trash mobs. So id say always go beserker or rampager if you want to maximise damage and giving you more flexibility.

Good day everyone, i got a message that i should share some ideas in this thread.

Just want to say that condition damage scales not only on 1 stat – condition damage stat, but also on condition/bleeding duration… so two stats (3rd stat is free for a reason).

Secondly (the reason), going for pure condition damage builds for PvE is a flawed thought process. You don’t just do condition damage in a condition damage build… let me start at the beginning…

Power type damage – condition type damage… how to fit these in a game and make them equivalent without being the same thing.
Power type damage seems something close, immediate… high risk high reward… well then… we’re going to make it dependent on 3 stats so you are forced glassy, and we’re going to give it limited AoE so it’s easier to play it… and at the same time we leave the AoE for the conditions…

Why ?… well they take a while to stack up, a lot of mobs take a while to gather… seems like a good idea so far. Ok… we need to put a cap on bleeding stacks… why is that ?…
Well… 1 warrior doing 5000 DPS = 1 warrior doing 5000 DPS (single target OR AoE), 2 warriors doing 5000 DPS = 10000 DPS (single target OR AoE)…
VS
1 necromancer doing 3000 DPS (single target) / 15000 DPS (AoE), 2 necromancers doing 6000 DPS (single target) / 30000 DPS (AoE)… x2 !!!! (2 epidemics… not one)

Power type damage that comes together increases by addition… condition damage that comes together increases exponentially (without a bleeding cap)
My point is that without a bleeding cap, power type damage would be ignored completely since 5 necromancers could easily stack 60 stacks of bleeding together… x5 epidemics… that would instantly kill everything and everyone in the radios, and would overthrow even power type damage for single target. Would literally bully it out…

So… what do you do then ?… We know that condition necromancers have an easy time keeping up with AoEs because epidemic can spread all conditions regardless if the necro was the source of the conditions… so he has his AoE DPS uptime as long as he presses epidemic every 12 seconds.
So… he has a lot of free time… he has to do something with that free time…
Here is where the 3rd free stat comes in…

So far necromancer isn’t an overkill for AoE because of the bleeding cap, and didn’t pushed power type damage off of single target, so it is required… the single target power type damage needs to be there. But… the single target high power type damage requires 3 stats to function… therefor is glassy…

How about while nailing the epidemic (for max AoE DPS uptime), you provide some support… Why ?… single target power type damage, the glassy ones… might not have DPS uptime because they are close… and glassy…

Every second more you offer the glass cannons near their target, is another 1 second more of DPS uptime you give to the group.

… and there you have it, two damage types… that function together and complete each other.

Now… the problem is, PvE is flawed… the build system and what it stands for is genius… but PvE is not properly designed, too simplistic… too… forgiving… therefor people could do things like CoF p1 fast runs which don’t need support to have 100% DPS uptime as glass cannons… and there you have it, the perfect idea… ruined…

~ the end.

Great argument for Condi build Nemesis.

For support I use Well of Darkness or Plague Signet. However I often see even with Plague Signet up my allies still hold on to conditions. Not sure if I misunderstand how it works or simply if its not working properly

Conditionmancer builds are exceptionally good at clearing up large concentrations of trash mobs or a boss’s adds. However, the cap on conditions just flattens the damage curve for bosses.

What Necromancer really needs is not just a weapon swap but trait and armor swap with it; essentially a total build swap. A suggestion I had a long time ago was to expand the weapon swapping idea to include armor, too, but adding traits to the swap would bypass the condition cap issue; at least, for a while.

Interesting idea Anchoku.

Nemesis you talk as if zerker groups dont use support when infact they do but they dont give anything up to do it. Also the bleed cap is a design limitation not a choice the devs made. Even without a cap there would still be a power meta for many fights due to build up time of conditions. And other classes do plenty of sustained direct damage aoe. Necro has plenty of both condi and direct aoe. We just have better sustained aoe on our condi weapons and utilities. Nothing beats the aoe eles can put out and thats purely direct damage.

Anyway the point remains. Conditions are only good for aoe but there are alternatives to aoeing trash down. Dungeons are mostly boss fights where condition specs are pretty terrible. Fractals its a bit better because theres a lot more trash and its mostly not skippable. But still its always seemed like a really wasteful and stupid thing to me to focus your build around the smallest and least important parts of dungeons (trash clearing).

spoj.9672:

Nemesis you talk as if zerker groups dont use support when infact they do but they dont give anything up to do it. Also the bleed cap is a design limitation not a choice the devs made. Even without a cap there would still be a power meta for many fights due to build up time of conditions. And other classes do plenty of sustained direct damage aoe. Necro has plenty of both condi and direct aoe. We just have better sustained aoe on our condi weapons and utilities. Nothing beats the aoe eles can put out and thats purely direct damage.

So… it’s… power, precision, critical strike damage + healing power, toughness, vitality (for support heal / support tank) + condition duration (for max CC weakness + chilling).
Where do you fit them all ?
Most people when you say support they go “aaaaaa… might stacks.. sureeee we have that”. That is not support…

CoF P1 never needed healing, chilling, weakness or anything… you all stand in one corner… spam skills with time warp for 100% DPS uptime on top of high power type damage from glass cannons that never got punished for being glassy at 100% DPS uptime… = PvE design flaw.

Nemesis.8593:

So… it’s… power, precision, critical strike damage + healing power, toughness, vitality (for support heal / support tank) + condition duration (for max CC weakness + chilling).
Where do you fit them all ?
Most people when you say support they go “aaaaaa… might stacks.. sureeee we have that”. That is not support…

CoF P1 never needed healing, chilling, weakness or anything… you all stand in one corner… spam skills with time warp for 100% DPS uptime on top of high power type damage from glass cannons that never got punished for being glassy at 100% DPS uptime… = PvE design flaw.

Support does not equal tanks and healers. GW2 isnt a trinity game. Support comes in the form of boons, blinds, aegis and projectile defense (damage avoidance). Glass builds are punished very easily if attacks arent avoided properly and mitigated or the dps is lacking because someone isnt pulling their weight. CoF p1 is the only dungeon where you dont need to dodge anything. Also another form of support is used (control), which involves position of mobs and interrupting various attacks.

There is a design flaw in pve but its not for the reasons you stated. The flaw is that condition damage is sub par compared to direct damage. And that mechanics are far too simple at the moment. Skilled players will always find ways to trivalise content as fast as possible. Forcing people to start taking toughness, vitality and healing power is not good design either.

spoj.9672:

Nemesis.8593:

So… it’s… power, precision, critical strike damage + healing power, toughness, vitality (for support heal / support tank) + condition duration (for max CC weakness + chilling).
Where do you fit them all ?
Most people when you say support they go “aaaaaa… might stacks.. sureeee we have that”. That is not support…

CoF P1 never needed healing, chilling, weakness or anything… you all stand in one corner… spam skills with time warp for 100% DPS uptime on top of high power type damage from glass cannons that never got punished for being glassy at 100% DPS uptime… = PvE design flaw.

Support does not equal tanks and healers. GW2 isnt a trinity game. Support comes in the form of boons, blinds, aegis and projectile defense (damage avoidance). Glass builds are punished very easily if attacks arent avoided properly and mitigated or the dps is lacking because someone isnt pulling their weight. CoF p1 is the only dungeon where you dont need to dodge anything. There is a design flaw in pve but its not for the reasons you stated. The flaw is that condition damage is sub par compared to direct damage. And that mechanics are far too simple at the moment. Skilled players will always find ways to trivalise content as fast as possible. Forcing people to start taking toughness, vitality and healing power is not good design either.

Well they need to reinvent the build system in that case, restructure the entire game… boons, damage types, everything… just so you are not forced to bring a healer or a tank… if you break away from the holy trinity that’s fine, but if you really want to not use the holy trinity aka use only the damage side of the holy trinity, then… you’ll have a damage game… build + gear check for damage = Diablo 3 ?…
I hate Diablo 3…

You either bring the PvE to the build system, or you bring the build system to the PvE.

I thought it’s wiser and easier to make the PvE after the already balanced (as a general concept) build system.
You think they should… scrap it ?…

That’s something i don’t think we’ll ever see…

PS: Support is not just damage avoidance, it’s damage compensation… what ever it takes so that the damage is done…
Damage kills mobs therefor challenge = can’t do damage therefor bring support to maintain 100% DPS uptime so that the mobs die.
What ever it takes so that the damage dealers have 100% DPS uptime… boons, buffs, heals, tanking…

Except healing and tanking dont work in gw2. They help slightly but any player using that kind of spec would help the group much more by contributing dps and helping with damage avoidance.

I’m really sorry to butt in with a noobish question, I genuinely don’t mean to troll, but I genuinely don’t understand the point of these threads. Thing is, pve isn’t competitive: one person’s success doesn’t affect your success. As long as any class can complete any pve content, what does it matter if zerker warriors can get through a boss fight marginally faster than you?

I understand that it could be a problem when it means that people doing way more damage than you means you don’t get gold completion in events, but, frankly, whenever I joined boss fights I normally just focus on the trash mobs, and when there weren’t any spam my autoattack on the boss – and I STILL get gold 90% of the time even though I’m sure other people are doing way more damage than me. So I’m genuinely puzzled that for other people not getting gold is a consistent problem – does it really happen that much?

Also, couldn’t the gold completion problem be fixed very easily by simply teaming up with other condition classes? Then you’re all equally “handicapped”, you all get gold, and, let’s face it, you don’t really finish fights THAT much slower than all-power groups do you?

I know there’s some elitism among some in the pve community, who won’t take people unless they have the right class and gear, but, I mean, it’s a big game, there’s gw2lfg.com and now an in-game tool too, so can’t you just ignore those people and go join other condi folks?

Also, quite frankly, whoever judges their teammates just by the amount of dps they’re putting out is utterly clueless if you ask me. I’m sure the amount of blind, poison, and weakness than your average conditionmancer can dole out helps a lot to keep people alive, and that those same people don’t complain that their guardian keeps giving them stability and cleansing their conditions rather than DPSing like mad. So can’t you just avoid these people instead of complaining about conditions being so terrible on the forums?

In all honesty I do think you have a point, all ANET have to do is lift the 25-stack cap for champion mobs and above, because those things have such massive health pools that it wouldn’t make much difference anyway. But even if they do, it would be more a quality of life change than something necessary, cause any way I look at it, it just doesn’t really matter!

I’m really not trying to troll. And I don’t do that much pve so there might be something I’m not realising, in which case please feel free to point it out!

Ive suffered from the “oh your condi, bye” <kick> situation before, though me and guild mates do a great job of getting through all content in good time.
The point of this post was to understand the arguments for why its bad (or good) compared to other play styles.

Spoj, the most important conditions for Necromancer are the ones that do little to no damage. Chill, blind, cripple, fear, daze, weakness, vulnerability, these are the profession’s CC. They work great when they are allowed to.

If Arenanet cared about conditions, they would make one of Tequatl’s fingers “miss” throwing poison for every blind he takes and slow finger poison tosses for every chill he takes. In fact, why can we not chill and blind the fingers directly? Why not make it so if you hit Tequatl with weakness 250 times, his waves hit for half damage during the next 60 seconds?

Nemesis is right about support builds, too. Lots of players do not quite make the connection that, because the game design abolished the holy trinity, it enabled players to tool their character to fit a variety of different roles. Unfortunately, the most effective build type in PvE is a power build and its variants for every single profession. If power builds were glassier and defense or vitality builds more supportive to those glassy builds, PvE would be more balanced forcing players to work together to hit maximum dps. Right now, everything is skewed toward power with too little reward for support skills like damage-reduction conditions and group healing.

Edit: Take the Warrior, for example. Five warriors join a group to do CoF p1. Ideally, to hit the minimum clear time for 5 War, the dungeon should favor 2 max dps CC builds, 1 condition build, and 2 healing/boon builds. Think about the game design and why this is not true, today. The structure is all there: Five trait trees with skills and bonuses that fit the theme of each.

Your essentually saying you want it to be equally rewarding for clearing the dungeon 5 times slower. If healing builds and tank builds become required its back to a trinity game which is against the devs original design. Despite many people trying to build trinity roles a good proportion are happy with no trinity. And although they would prefer a bit more variety they dont want clear roles which is what you guys seem to be saying. DPS is required no matter what, you cant kill things if you dont have dps. So to make pve better the dps roles should just have other layers. Dps and cc, dps and support, dps and buff for example (for the meta). Which is actually how it already is in some regards, just not obvious enough because boss mechanics are a joke at the moment. Casual players will always play sub optimal builds, so theres no point trying to change that.

Not talking about CoF p1, but in actual somewhat challenging content (Higher Tier Fractals, etc.) I have found myself raising these Zerker build warriors. Several times, have I been talked to down to for running a condition build only to be raising those same people later in a fight. I like to remind them that they do very little damage while downed.

Cakeisalie.1976:

Not talking about CoF p1, but in actual somewhat challenging content (Higher Tier Fractals, etc.) I have found myself raising these Zerker build warriors. Several times, have I been talked to down to for running a condition build only to be raising those same people later in a fight. I like to remind them that they do no very little damage while downed.

Another misconception people seem to have. If you are running a condi build you are probably sitting back ranging with scepter right? Ofcouse you wont go down as much. The warriors are doing good damage and putting themselves in a risky situation. Even highly skilled groups go down, but they stack and rally each other quickly so its not an issue. Being downed is not no dps, its just a slight hiccup.

spoj.9672:

Your essentually saying you want it to be equally rewarding for clearing the dungeon 5 times slower. If healing builds and tank builds become required its back to a trinity game which is against the devs original design. Despite many people trying to build trinity roles a good proportion are happy with no trinity. And although they would prefer a bit more variety they dont want clear roles which is what you guys seem to be saying. DPS is required no matter what, you cant kill things if you dont have dps. So to make pve better the dps roles should just have other layers. Dps and cc, dps and support, dps and buff for example (for the meta). Which is actually how it already is in some regards, just not obvious enough because boss mechanics are a joke at the moment. Casual players will always play sub optimal builds, so theres no point trying to change that.

Well… i seem to recall you saying my “AoE DPS support condition build” is a bad idea, since you don’t need “DPS-support”.
That’s exactly what i keep preaching… condi-AoE-DPS-support, power-singletarget – DPS – debuffer, reflecting (great damage upon reflect) – healer… and so on…

The builds are there… i’ve made some of them, now give us the PvE where to use it…

True but thats my point. They are pointless at the moment.