Guild Wars 2

Why do I keep reading that Weakness isn’t useful in PvE? I don’t understand.

I don’t either. The damage reducing part is just as helpful there as anywhere else.

In PVE, there are several problems with weakness.

#1: Champions have weakness duration reduced by 50%. Since weakness already has short durations, this means that most weakness falls off champs before they fire off an attack.

#2: Weakness is RNG based. Since many champs will kill players in 1 to 2 hits, there is little reason to invest and weakness and maybe survive than to invest in something else and definitely survive.

#3: It is the weakest form of mitigation. At an average of 25% reduction of damage, it is beaten out by protection (33%), blocks (100%), blinds (100% on non-champs), dodges and evades (100%), and also by CC on occasion (100%)

#4: Weakness is enemy dependent, instead of player dependent. This means that application ceases being useful the moment an enemy is dead, and in many circumstances this happens really fast.

Put all of these together, and you’ll see why weakness has issues. IMO, if champs didn’t have their weakness duration reduced, then weakness would be much more useful. Until then, weakness isn’t something a player should invest any points in.

Its nice as an incidental “oh hey I passively applied some weakness and it did something”, but not good enough to make you go out of your way to sacrifice other things for it. The only time I’d really consider dropping something else for it is with CPC, since just dropping one utility (which usually isn’t massive for necros in PvE) gets you comparatively a lot, and I’d only do that in a group with decent weakness uptime already, as a means of filling in extra gaps.

But again, the issue is that even with CPC each pulse’s weakness will have fallen off by the next pulse, unless there are other sources of weakness or 100% condi duration.

(#5) a relatively strong part of weakness, the reduced endurance regen, doesnt do kitten in PvE

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

In PVE, there are several problems with weakness.

#1: Champions have weakness duration reduced by 50%. Since weakness already has short durations, this means that most weakness falls off champs before they fire off an attack.

#2: Weakness is RNG based. Since many champs will kill players in 1 to 2 hits, there is little reason to invest and weakness and maybe survive than to invest in something else and definitely survive.

#3: It is the weakest form of mitigation. At an average of 25% reduction of damage, it is beaten out by protection (33%), blocks (100%), blinds (100% on non-champs), dodges and evades (100%), and also by CC on occasion (100%)

#4: Weakness is enemy dependent, instead of player dependent. This means that application ceases being useful the moment an enemy is dead, and in many circumstances this happens really fast.

Put all of these together, and you’ll see why weakness has issues. IMO, if champs didn’t have their weakness duration reduced, then weakness would be much more useful. Until then, weakness isn’t something a player should invest any points in.

Ah, makes sense. I was thinking more along the lines of Ele Earth Staff 1 than actually sacrificing utilities for it, but even then the chances it would actually help are pretty slim I can see.

Prior to it being nerfed, I found it useful in some niche PvE situations roaming solo. Between the pre-nerf longer weakness duration in conjunction with Putrid Mark comboing for Area Weakness, Putrid Mark transferring the self-inflicted weakness from CPC, and condition duration, it was easy to maintain perma-weakness on mobs.

With the nerf to the weakness duration along with all the reasons stated above, I haven’t equipped it in a very long time.