Guild Wars 2

Roy Cronacher wrote up a piece explaining future changes to the combat system. Some good news for condi builds.

Bullet Summary
• Each intensity-stacking damaging condition will stack to a much larger number. In other words, there will be no more limit on damaging conditions
• Burning and poison will be intensity-stacking conditions, damage formulas will be adjusted to account for this.
• Poison will only stack its damaging portion on a foe, healing affecting portion has no change.
• Confusion will be split it into two effects. It will retain the damage on attack, but at a lesser amount than its previous version. That damage has been added back in the form of a damage-over-time effect.
• The condi damage formulas are still being adjusted the break-even point before you start doing more damage is around 700 condition damage.
• Vulnerability will increase both direct damage and condition damage taken by an afflicted foe.
• Movement skills will be normalized so that movement-speed increases or decreases do not impact the distance traveled by your character.

Source – https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/combat-changes-dotsanddashes/

Thank goodness for the Vulnerability change to impact condition damage as well as direct damage. At least now Vulnerability would be more useful to condition builds.

+1 to these changes.

Dual ragee condi bomb inc. 50+ stacks of bleed instantly. Rip.

The only bad thing about all this are shoutbow’s not getting changed (that we know of), still leaving conditions kinda pointless in SPvP. It’s a buff for the already strong condition roamer WvW builds tho.

Looks like cele ranger will be a horrible choice for PvP. Triple nerfed: the cele amulet will get a 10% stat reduction, the traits will no longer boost condi damage, and condi damage recalculated.

this is really nice. every new piece of information they release about the new specs makes makes me believe that the 0/0/6/6/6 condi BM bunker will be a monstrosity. and I have high hopes for traps and SB. im also looking forward to possible running a condi build in PVE, wont have to have multiple sets of gear for that.

the other thing to note is that with these changes, cele is getting a serious nerf. cele specs being too strong is the main reason rangers aren’t a part of the current meta. this is definitely going to change.

Fluffball.8307:

Looks like cele ranger will be a horrible choice for PvP. Triple nerfed: the cele amulet will get a 10% stat reduction, the traits will no longer boost condi damage, and condi damage recalculated.

well cele has always been totally unviable for our prof. stats are simply being moved to the amulet and therefore made baseline. and condi rabid or regen builds will with 1400+ condi damage may be insanely good.

Poison is actually a nerf because now it’d expire much quickly, and no longer able to stack up to like 1 minute. Also the mutli-hit 2~3 seconds of poison will be useless now because it no longer stacks, so instead of 15 seconds of poison, it’d be 3 seconds.

all condi damage will scale better with specialized condi builds (dire, rabid, settler, etc.). so it will just be more like bleeds. not a problem for us, considering how many sources of poison we have.

mistsim.2748:

all condi damage will scale better with specialized condi builds (dire, rabid, settler, etc.). so it will just be more like bleeds.

The purpose of poison is never for the damage, but for the -healing effect. The longer the duration of poison the better. Now it’s impossible to stop Warrior from regenerating none-stop.

the purpose of poison with the new changes will be damage AND -healing. that’s the point. you should still be able to keep perma poison up, and the you get the -healing effect from only one stack, that’s not being changed.

mistsim.2748:

the purpose of poison with the new changes will be damage AND -healing. that’s the point. you should still be able to keep perma poison up, and the you get the -healing effect from only one stack, that’s not being changed.

Yeah, but instead of the old easily 1 minute of poison, now would be like 5~10 seconds at most. For example, my poison spider can hit 3 times with poison, stacking up to 21 seconds of poison with 3 consecutive hits. Now spider will hit 3 times like he used to, but stack up to 7+1+1 = 9 seconds of poison at best. (1 second = spider’s attack interval)

Aomine.5012:

mistsim.2748:

the purpose of poison with the new changes will be damage AND -healing. that’s the point. you should still be able to keep perma poison up, and the you get the -healing effect from only one stack, that’s not being changed.

Yeah, but instead of the old easily 1 minute of poison, now would be like 5~10 seconds at most. For example, my poison spider can hit 3 times with poison, stacking up to 21 seconds of poison with 3 consecutive hits. Now spider will hit 3 times like he used to, but stack up to 7+1+1 = 9 seconds of poison at best. (1 second = spider’s attack interval)

There’s also a positive way. Thieves moving in just to Steal,and apply eternity-long poison will be nerfed by this.

mistsim.2748:

well cele has always been totally unviable for our prof. stats are simply being moved to the amulet and therefore made baseline. and condi rabid or regen builds will with 1400+ condi damage may be insanely good.

I’ve been running cele for the past year or so. It’s listed on pretty much every build as a variant on metabattle, and cele rangers have regularly showed up in tourneys (until recently it seems, when everyone has abandoned rangers entirely.)

Makes a me a little sad because pure condi rangers can’t contribute to team fights, and I don’t like LB for PvP.

Oh well, maybe something good can be found in the new traits.

So let me get this right. Condition damage which is not affected by armor is now affected by vulnerability.

There are already people asking for stat like condition, power and ferocity because a lot of the new and up coming changes will give some classes 50% or more crit chance without investment.

I don’t have a problem with condition in a general sense but I dislike the passive nature of the play style of many that use it.

With these changes I see the Rise of the condi meta. I mean why run anything else when you give up very little and are able to cover just about every weakness.

The only good thing is now the trait changes Power ranger can have a little more condition cleanse and more defensive traits. However with the new change everyone will be running conditions so it wont be enough.

I hope there will be a lot of access to the new boon that stop condition from ticking. I forgot the name of it.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

With these changes I see the Rise of the condi meta. I mean why run anything else when you give up very little and are able to cover just about every weakness.

Maybe, but keep in mind the current meta is power because you can’t keep condis on people in group fights. If you’re fighting 1v1, condi is really strong, but also nothing has changed in that case. If you’re fighting 5v5, you can’t get condis to stick.

There are so many ways to counter power damage and more counter to range power damage. You give up so much to run an effective Power build.

While conditions needed some help. I do believe that it needed a change to vulnerability.

The strength of conditions is in it self reliant. The major weakness of conditions have now been removed. It takes time to build stacks up, but time is in the condition users favor.

People say that zerker makes content to easy. How fast will world bosses melt when vulnerability and condition damage blowing them up.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

The major weakness of conditions have now been removed. It takes time to build stacks up, but time is in the condition users favor.

I’m not following. Time is in the favor of shout warrior. Nothing has changed about condi removal; vulnerability, 400 bleeds, etc. don’t matter because everything gets cleared so quickly.

If you’re talking about PvE or WvW zergs, power is still faster. It’s hard to even get a condi tag down before other people explode something with power in those 2 situations.

The shout warrior vs a condi ranger is the equivalent to a Guardian vs a Lb power ranger.

You do understand that 1 second of 400 stack of bleed will destroy you. While they are reducing the damage per tick even at 50% reduction that is 20k per tic.

People can’t react to a 2 1/2 channeling skill (rapid fire). Aoe Condi damage skills will destroy a lot of people in wvw before they have time to react.

Maybe trapper rangers (other than roaming) will be useful in wvw.

Ha, I meant the increased bleed stacks don’t matter for PvP. Every team runs with massive condi clear at the moment.

In WvW someone with 400 stacks of bleed will die, but I don’t really see zergs switching to condi. Zergs already run vitality and toughness, so they don’t get any tankier. Getting hit with 20 hammer smashes will kill you just as much as getting hit with 400 stacks of bleed, only the former takes less time to apply.

Fluffball.8307:

Ha, I meant the increased bleed stacks don’t matter for PvP. Every team runs with massive condi clear at the moment.

In WvW someone with 400 stacks of bleed will die, but I don’t really see zergs switching to condi. Zergs already run vitality and toughness, so they don’t get any tankier. Getting hit with 20 hammer smashes will kill you just as much as getting hit with 400 stacks of bleed, only the former takes less time to apply.

It’s actually a massive nerf for condition in PVP.
Bleed should never hit 25 stacks in PVP anyway.
Poison uptime decreases because of stack in intensity not duration.
Burn uptime and damage decrease, and it’s not going to stack up high anyway.
Confusion getting nerf because in PVP the trigger part is much more useful than DoT
Chill/Cripple getting nerfed because movement skills ignore it.

Basically it’s a huge NERF of condition in PVP.
Those changes only benefit condition specs in PVE, and it’s only a good change in PVE.

I disagree, Aomine. In team fights condis are usually irrelevant, so let’s just ignore them for simplicity. In 1v1s, which is what I think you’re talking about, many classes including ranger can stack way more than 1 poison. Even with meta-level condi clears, you can keep poison on people pretty easily so I think you can keep decent to high levels of condis on people 1v1 after the changes.

It might be a nerf to sigil or doom or etc., but really, sigil of doom is a bit silly to begin with.

I don’t like the poison change…because poison was / is not meant to be damaging. The entire point of poison is to force a condition clear or suffer quite a long -HP recovery.

On the flip side, I do like the change to burning, as that condition does seem to be intended to be more bursty and not damage over time. So combos like bonfire / throw torch will be pretty useful in encouraging condition clears.

Cap limit removal is nice for PvE, and to some extent WvW I guess. If anything, it will let what little condition damage our pets do actually be counted. I still wish there was a trait or something that made pets scale off the ranger stats.

So really, its probably a wash. If anything, the made poison master completely useless as that extra 2 stacks of poison is probably going to do minimal damage and pales in comparison to our HAZMAT trait.

They have already tested stacking poison in Queens gauntlet. One of the Pirates had some form of poison stacking and it was deadly. Shout warriors are quite susceptible to really high condition damage output. If you can keep the pressure up, they have trouble. They only get 4 clears before they melt and the natural resistance they carry through traits won’t help if your condition power is high enough. In the current setup we have to be way too glassy to accomplish this, but after HotM I am not sure this will be true anymore. Fire stacking and poison stacking will give us several brutal bursts n same build.

Archon.6480:

They only get 4 clears before they melt

They get 2 F2s, 3 shouts and 2 warhorn skills. Shout warriors are effectively immune to conditions to the point I’ve see people /sleep when up against condi builds on stream and still win. I haven’t done it in a match but I’ve done it after matches.

It’s a BAD matchup for condi builds. I’ve won it on cele/condi builds, but it’s because I was better. They were using the better build and messed up.

The required amount of condition damage really makes expertise training seem like a trait bloat illusion of choice as the pets without base secondary stats are only getting 350 which while better than base zero is far from functioning well in their new vision of mechanics.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

The only good thing is now the trait changes Power ranger can have a little more condition cleanse and more defensive traits. However with the new change everyone will be running conditions so it wont be enough.

I hope there will be a lot of access to the new boon that stop condition from ticking. I forgot the name of it.

I am not concerned about the LB power ranger at all. 6/6/6/0/0 will be so incredibly strong with Quickdraw. we’ll still have the range and mobility. remember that all condi builds are 0-600 range or so. with 2-3 wilderness utilities, entangle, and TU that’s virtually limitless on-demand condi cleansing and perma fury.

Fluffball.8307:

Archon.6480:

They only get 4 clears before they melt

They get 2 F2s, 3 shouts and 2 warhorn skills. Shout warriors are effectively immune to conditions to the point I’ve see people /sleep when up against condi builds on stream and still win. I haven’t done it in a match but I’ve done it after matches.

It’s a BAD matchup for condi builds. I’ve won it on cele/condi builds, but it’s because I was better. They were using the better build and messed up.

I mostly agree, except that celestial ranger has 1v1 advantage over shoutbow and should win that fight. Shoutbow has strength in team fight were it can clear conditions from allies as well as self. It has quite a few weaknesses when caught by itself. I agree it can /sleep against some really bad players running meta SB build and still win.

mistsim.2748:

Serraphin Storm.2369:

The only good thing is now the trait changes Power ranger can have a little more condition cleanse and more defensive traits. However with the new change everyone will be running conditions so it wont be enough.

I hope there will be a lot of access to the new boon that stop condition from ticking. I forgot the name of it.

I am not concerned about the LB power ranger at all. 6/6/6/0/0 will be so incredibly strong with Quickdraw. we’ll still have the range and mobility. remember that all condi builds are 0-600 range or so. with 2-3 wilderness utilities, entangle, and TU that’s virtually limitless on-demand condi cleansing and perma fury.

Be wary that they add numerous more reflection/projectile blocks on many classes.
Revenant will get 100% upkeep projectile block too.

If burning is being reduced in damage because it is stacking, I really hope they add in more stacks to the Torch or extend the durations, else, it is taking a massive nerf.

Aomine.5012:

mistsim.2748:

Serraphin Storm.2369:

The only good thing is now the trait changes Power ranger can have a little more condition cleanse and more defensive traits. However with the new change everyone will be running conditions so it wont be enough.

I hope there will be a lot of access to the new boon that stop condition from ticking. I forgot the name of it.

I am not concerned about the LB power ranger at all. 6/6/6/0/0 will be so incredibly strong with Quickdraw. we’ll still have the range and mobility. remember that all condi builds are 0-600 range or so. with 2-3 wilderness utilities, entangle, and TU that’s virtually limitless on-demand condi cleansing and perma fury.

Be wary that they add numerous more reflection/projectile blocks on many classes.
Revenant will get 100% upkeep projectile block too.

while they totally went overkill on projectile deflection/absorption, im not too worried about it when our AA and RF are spammable nukes.

My long bow comment wasn’t a concern about the Lb ranger my point was a bad match up is a bad match up but doesn’t mean an auto lose.

As far as wvw goes there will be guild out there that will see how viable condition are. If they are successful against standard zergs I can see a rapid change in the meta.

While the hammer train is brutal a lot of conditions are ranged, range aoe, wells , traps making it possible to neutralize or break the train before they get into threat range.

If no WvW guilds attempt this then it will stay business as usual. Even minor success will produce some shift in the meta.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

If burning is being reduced in damage because it is stacking, I really hope they add in more stacks to the Torch or extend the durations, else, it is taking a massive nerf.

I think this will be the case. they wont be nerfing the dps, but to compensate for lower damage per stack we’ll likely get 3 stacks on throw torch for example. and maybe even get a small buff from it.

mistsim.2748:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

If burning is being reduced in damage because it is stacking, I really hope they add in more stacks to the Torch or extend the durations, else, it is taking a massive nerf.

I think this will be the case. they wont be nerfing the dps, but to compensate for lower damage per stack we’ll likely get 3 stacks on throw torch for example. and maybe even get a small buff from it.

I really hope so, because currently you get 9 ticks of burning (on Bonfire) without + duration, if that were to stay the same, torch would suck.

They better be taking a long, hard look at pet stats with regards to condition damage now that they’re going with this new condition system.

Pets cap out at 300 condition damage right now, and that’s WITH traits.

If the new system is going to treat 700 as the “baseline” that the current conditions hit, then pet conditions are going to be completely useless unless they give them a serious boost in their condition damage, both baseline and traits.

Electro.4173:

They better be taking a long, hard look at pet stats with regards to condition damage now that they’re going with this new condition system.

Pets cap out at 300 condition damage right now, and that’s WITH traits.

If the new system is going to treat 700 as the “baseline” that the current conditions hit, then pet conditions are going to be completely useless unless they give them a serious boost in their condition damage, both baseline and traits.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

kiwituatara.6053:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Well, at least our pets that have no condition damage will be even worse, and hardly better even if we take Expertise Training. There is that to look forward to…

Expertise training is going to need to be doubled.

I did run Sharpened Edges with glassbow at times purely because there was no other trait in Skirm adept that added damage, and it is handy for keeping people in combat for a couple of extra seconds, but the damage is negligible really.

So the current bleed from pets without Expertise Training is like 43 ticks. I may be wrong but I think Anet is buffing pet bleed baseline to 86 ticks.

Source: http://i.imgur.com/VFtz017.jpg
Look at Rending Strikes. 516 damage over 6s.
516/6 = 86.

Ah, well spotted mate!

87 damage on a bleed tick is 897 condition damage. I wonder if the tooltip is working correctly or if it is bugged to scale off the rangers condition damage. It could also, of course, just be 18 stacks of Might and Expertise Training.

If it is working correctly, HOORAY! Even if this is WITH Expertise Training, it is still a 5+5+0 (kitten filter) base condition damage, assuming no might stacks.

Why does everyone forget about the scaling changing along with the base damage? Right there in the blog post, it says (paraphrasing), “about 700 condition damage is where you’ll start to do more damage than before”. With poison and burning stacking, what this really means is that we can actually get condition spikes.

Let’s look at an example. SB2. 5 stacks of poison for 2s. Let’s assume 700 condition damage, as that seems to be the balancing point between old and new. 5 applications of 2 seconds gives us 10s of poison, for 1500 damage. In the new system, 5 stacks of 2 seconds poison gives us 2 ticks for 750, or 1500 total damage. Same damage right? And that’s the point, but 1500 in 2 seconds isn’t worth cleansing, and even if they do, you still might get 750 damage from it, as opposed to 150 from the old tick.

And let’s not forget. 700 is a small number when you’re stacking condition damage. That’s hybrid levels of stat allocation, meaning the 2k condi damage builds we have now are going to be that much more effective, and then there’s vuln adding another 1-25% more damage on top of that.

Skills like Bonfire are going to be much more about keeping the condition on people, but other types like poison volley are going to be condition spike skills.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Why does everyone forget about the scanning changing along with the base damage? Right there in the blog post, it says (paraphrasing), “about 700 condition damage is where you’ll start to do more damage than before”. With poison and burning stacking, what this really means is that we can actually get condition spikes.

Let’s look at an example. SB2. 5 stacks of poison for 2s. Let’s assume 700 condition damage, as that seems to be the balancing point between old and new. 5 applications of 2 second gives us 10s of poison, for 1500 damage. In the new system, 5 stacks of 2 second poison gives us ticks for 750, or 1500 total damage. Same damage right? And that’s the point, but 1500 in 2 seconds isn’t worth cleansing, and even if they do, you still might get 750 damage from it, as opposed to 150 from the old tick.

And let’s not forget. 700 is a small number when you’re stacking condition damage. That’s hybrid levels of stat allocation, meaning the 2k condi damage builds we have now are going to be that much more effective, and then there’s vuln adding another 1-25% more damage on top of that.

Skills like Bonfire are going to be much more about keeping the condition on people, but other types like poison volley are going to be condition spike skills.

Are you talking about the scaling and not scanning?

What it actually means is that poison volley will not be able to maintain poison on people now for the -33% heal (most important part of poison), instead it will do a short duration burst, of how long and how much we do not know because we do not know how many stacks poison will go to and we do not know how poison will scale.

You are using the same scaling for before and after for your example, 1500 total damage. If base damage is reduced and it scales differently, it may do far less damage due to the stacking of intensity instead of duration. It may even end up only being 3 stacks of poison that will stack, effectively wasting two of the volley’s shots.

This is all assuming you hit with all arrows, the less arrows that hit, the worse it becomes.

These changes are actually pretty bad for us, imo, especially for SB and hybrid builds that run with 500-800 condi damage. It is all or nothing condition now.

Scanning was an auto correct issue that’s since been fixed. I can only use my phone as my computer is super ded and stuff, bear with me.

They mentioned 700 was the turning point, so taking that into consideration, it would mean that’s where the lower base and higher scaling even out, which is why that number was used.

True, some skills will be more difficult to maintain condition duration with, so you’ll either need to be more skillful in application (ensure a poison volley right on their heal) or you’ll need to bring multiple application sources (trap, SB, spiders, poison master trait, dagger, etc.). Honestly I think it works out to be significantly better of a situation. Perhaps the extra damage itself outweighs the -33% healing your lack of poison would’ve had. And hybrid specs will be fine. Celestial builds won’t be nearly as effective without copious stacks of might, but hybrid build will still easily be able to surpass 700 without might.

I hope pet poison will not be bad after specialization, since their condition stats are so low and stacking is quite meaningless

Wasn’t having a go or anything, figured it was that borked auto-correct.

imo, the -33% is by far the best thing about poison and having less duration due to intensity really takes away from it.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Wasn’t having a go or anything, figured it was that borked auto-correct.

imo, the -33% is by far the best thing about poison and having less duration due to intensity really takes away from it.

Anet said they’re going to nerf Celestial specs which has good healing, but then they’re nerfing poison too to compensate lol. Celestial will still dominate the meta.

Electro.4173:

Pets cap out at 300 condition damage right now, and that’s WITH traits.

Show your pets some love – give them some might stacks for a nice 1100 condition damage max.