Guild Wars 2

…would some day decide to remove the 14 stacks of confusion on me instead of the 4 second, 1 stack of torment…

If bon steal can prioritize, so should a single condi clear ;_;

Last in, first out.

Would be nice to see some sort of prioritization of damaging condis due to how prevalent they are atm and how massively they were buffed when stacking was made allowed. Also considering most condi builds play in combination with bunker stats it’d be great to see a reduced effectiveness as a trade off for effort put in to play it. At the same time though then certain builds would have to be looked at as condi clear may be too high at that point to get any meaningful damage off…

condis are stored in a Stack. hope this helps

Almost like they intentionally changed Shadow’s Embrace to handle these kinds of issues and completely ignore cover conditions as to prevent DoT death by prioritizing heavy incoming damage for better sustain potential.

People still shout it was heavily nerfed, though, failing to recognize how much better this trait is these days.

But yea, part of playing condi is covering DoT’s with “useless” or spammable effects to prevent cleansing. Easy these days just because of the number of passive procs and random conditions being applied by everything, though. Bulk cleanse to remove the DoT’s is typically much more important than a high rate of single-condition cleansing.

I honestly think the source of the issue (the amount of condi flying around and how easy it is applied now) should be fixed and not tools to deal with it. I dare to say that this game was more fun and made more sense in the past when stun breaks, condi cleanse but as well condi applications and CCs were scarce and came at rather high (opportunity) costs.

Deceiver, I’d give you that if it weren’t for the fact that they also stacked reveal onto other classes in order to counter our stealthing capabilities and load them with sustain to make it pointless for us to draw out fights… (granted I still love SE for the condi cleanse when I can get away with it but more often than not it is better just to take daredevil as it offers more cleanse and utility overall.)

Cynz, I’m with you all the way. They made too much spam with all the auto procs and added effects to skills with reduced CD’s. If they would focus on changing the spam nature to more time and skill based play then we would see loads of improvement on balance and marketing.

Don’t get me wrong, I completely agree with both of you in that condi application these days is way too easy for how strong the ticks are. Thing is, the PvE crowd demanded huge condi damage to compete with berserker gear, and it’s very unlikely that this will get redacted. Upping cleanse is probably the only feasible idea.

I wouldn’t say that reveal is too easy to come by so much that it’s too potent at the moment, and the thief is too dependent on the effect. Sic ‘Em is a fair example of a skill which does the application properly in that is still requires a target. AoE applications on fairly low cooldowns just don’t really make a lot of sense.

There definitely needs to be cooldown adjustment and a reversion of spammy play back more towards how the game was defined at release. These days all skills seem to be made useful all the time and available all the time with no drawbacks due to the passive nature of defenses. This trivializes a lot of the fighting and makes the game as a whole a lot less enjoyable. I feel like I’m back in a WoW-clone at times.

DeceiverX.8361:

Almost like they intentionally changed Shadow’s Embrace to handle these kinds of issues and completely ignore cover conditions as to prevent DoT death by prioritizing heavy incoming damage for better sustain potential.

People still shout it was heavily nerfed, though, failing to recognize how much better this trait is these days.

But yea, part of playing condi is covering DoT’s with “useless” or spammable effects to prevent cleansing. Easy these days just because of the number of passive procs and random conditions being applied by everything, though. Bulk cleanse to remove the DoT’s is typically much more important than a high rate of single-condition cleansing.

the thing is, imho, that the change is strong in theory, yes dmg condi are removed faster, BUT when only playing with SA SE, how do you remove slow? weakness? vuln!? etc, non dmg condi especially weakness will kill you as a thief because you just cannot get your dmg out or you take so much dmg because you can’t clear the 20 stacks of vuln
that is the major issue with the changes to SE

There are ways of removing specific conditions but people do not take them because they are considered trash.

Too many are enraptured with power creep. There more and more damage in attacks so they go “all in” for more power and ignore entire traitlines just to get higher damage. They than wonder why they lack condition cleanse.

In one build d/d condition (which contrary to claims has many of its own weaknesses that are not condition related), I sacrificed damage to get more healing into the build. Using GI the conditions weakness/vulnerability/confusion and slow are rarely on him. He prone to stuns by dropping HTC but finds with near 2k heals on each DB can quickly recover health to over 75 percent so as to kick in GI. Coupled with PR in the same line those single use condition cleanses such as escapists are far more effective. This a build using no trickery which too many deem “mandatory” .

in my s/d build (in truth s/d d/p as both used equally) I do not even use that GI. Indeed I do not take stealth skills OR escapists in most cases as I find i generally have enough condition cleanses in the build. Trickster traited with two tricks. QP traited and I diligently swap weapons in combat. Virtually every meta I look at sigils air/fire slotted as people want more damage . Purity/cleansing can work wonders here helping to keep those cover conditions off so that the things like SE or escapists can more reliably take off the ones that do damage. With the higher INI due to QP i can more readily use Infiltrators for added cleansing.

UC is a beaut of a skill and IMHO worth taking over bounding in power builds just to help keep Chill/crippled off , again cover conditions that by being kept off allow those single use cleanses like infiltrators to become more effective at getting at that confusion stack.

Yes in dropping bounding or air sigils or fire sigils or taking CS line or DA line over Acro you sacrifice damage But I think it a choice we should have to make.

We are never going to be immune to conditions nor should we be, but if you are willing to sacrifice a bit of that damage that so many are focused on and given AA damage more hard hitting putting that sigil of air away in favor of a purity or tking acro over DA can help significantly.

babazhook.6805:

There are ways of removing specific conditions but people do not take them because they are considered trash.

Too many are enraptured with power creep. There more and more damage in attacks so they go “all in” for more power and ignore entire traitlines just to get higher damage. They than wonder why they lack condition cleanse.

In one build d/d condition (which contrary to claims has many of its own weaknesses that are not condition related), I sacrificed damage to get more healing into the build. Using GI the conditions weakness/vulnerability/confusion and slow are rarely on him. He prone to stuns by dropping HTC but finds with near 2k heals on each DB can quickly recover health to over 75 percent so as to kick in GI. Coupled with PR in the same line those single use condition cleanses such as escapists are far more effective. This a build using no trickery which too many deem “mandatory” .

in my s/d build (in truth s/d d/p as both used equally) I do not even use that GI. Indeed I do not take stealth skills OR escapists in most cases as I find i generally have enough condition cleanses in the build. Trickster traited with two tricks. QP traited and I diligently swap weapons in combat. Virtually every meta I look at sigils air/fire slotted as people want more damage . Purity/cleansing can work wonders here helping to keep those cover conditions off so that the things like SE or escapists can more reliably take off the ones that do damage. With the higher INI due to QP i can more readily use Infiltrators for added cleansing.

UC is a beaut of a skill and IMHO worth taking over bounding in power builds just to help keep Chill/crippled off , again cover conditions that by being kept off allow those single use cleanses like infiltrators to become more effective at getting at that confusion stack.

Yes in dropping bounding or air sigils or fire sigils or taking CS line or DA line over Acro you sacrifice damage But I think it a choice we should have to make.

We are never going to be immune to conditions nor should we be, but if you are willing to sacrifice a bit of that damage that so many are focused on and given AA damage more hard hitting putting that sigil of air away in favor of a purity or tking acro over DA can help significantly.

to be honest, I’ve been playing a CS/DrD/Trick build, with remove condi on trick, remove condi on dodge and purity
together with withdraw and roll for ini and the sigil that cleanes on activation
it’s not enough, for normal fights yes it’s fine, in a group fight against 1 or 2 condi as well, but 1 v 1 against condi, especially perplexity bullkitten it’s good enough to run away, if the condi (nub^^) is on your skill lv you won’t win, even with acro or sa condi cleanse

I do think that were SE shifted to one of the minor slots trhe Shadow Arts line could be more useful. Ie trait up a lower deception cooldown so one can take shadowstep and HIS on a lower cooldown.

The line itself is not all bad trait wise , it just needs a wee bit of organization so one trait not compromising another.

babazhook.6805:

I do think that were SE shifted to one of the minor slots trhe Shadow Arts line could be more useful. Ie trait up a lower deception cooldown so one can take shadowstep and HIS on a lower cooldown.

The line itself is not all bad trait wise , it just needs a wee bit of organization so one trait not compromising another.

yeah i aggree on that, e.g. i think making CiS a GM was stupid and having 50% speed on Hidden Thief as well, since Hidden Thief is something DD thieves needed most of all, the trait hidden thief kittens up a DD strongest burst

DHawk.2687:

babazhook.6805:

There are ways of removing specific conditions but people do not take them because they are considered trash.

Too many are enraptured with power creep. There more and more damage in attacks so they go “all in” for more power and ignore entire traitlines just to get higher damage. They than wonder why they lack condition cleanse.

In one build d/d condition (which contrary to claims has many of its own weaknesses that are not condition related), I sacrificed damage to get more healing into the build. Using GI the conditions weakness/vulnerability/confusion and slow are rarely on him. He prone to stuns by dropping HTC but finds with near 2k heals on each DB can quickly recover health to over 75 percent so as to kick in GI. Coupled with PR in the same line those single use condition cleanses such as escapists are far more effective. This a build using no trickery which too many deem “mandatory” .

in my s/d build (in truth s/d d/p as both used equally) I do not even use that GI. Indeed I do not take stealth skills OR escapists in most cases as I find i generally have enough condition cleanses in the build. Trickster traited with two tricks. QP traited and I diligently swap weapons in combat. Virtually every meta I look at sigils air/fire slotted as people want more damage . Purity/cleansing can work wonders here helping to keep those cover conditions off so that the things like SE or escapists can more reliably take off the ones that do damage. With the higher INI due to QP i can more readily use Infiltrators for added cleansing.

UC is a beaut of a skill and IMHO worth taking over bounding in power builds just to help keep Chill/crippled off , again cover conditions that by being kept off allow those single use cleanses like infiltrators to become more effective at getting at that confusion stack.

Yes in dropping bounding or air sigils or fire sigils or taking CS line or DA line over Acro you sacrifice damage But I think it a choice we should have to make.

We are never going to be immune to conditions nor should we be, but if you are willing to sacrifice a bit of that damage that so many are focused on and given AA damage more hard hitting putting that sigil of air away in favor of a purity or tking acro over DA can help significantly.

to be honest, I’ve been playing a CS/DrD/Trick build, with remove condi on trick, remove condi on dodge and purity
together with withdraw and roll for ini and the sigil that cleanes on activation
it’s not enough, for normal fights yes it’s fine, in a group fight against 1 or 2 condi as well, but 1 v 1 against condi, especially perplexity bullkitten it’s good enough to run away, if the condi (nub^^) is on your skill lv you won’t win, even with acro or sa condi cleanse

Are you using s/d? I find it enough against the same so dropped escapists in that build. If you use d/p than you might have more issues.

Stating “acro is not enough” does not mean a lot to me . PR alone removes 4 harmful conditions which helps expose confusion to a cleanse. Don’t stop if traited will keep another 2 off .

Perplexity rune builds rely on getting an interrupt to get the main long lasting stacks on. That interrupt can be evaded/dodged. The other confusion occurring when hit has a low duration and one is not forced to attack when confusion running. The DOT of confusion is rather low unless you start attacking and you should be able to survive it.

Depending on which of my builds i am using I will tend to let confusion just lapse. That said this becomes a much harder thing to do if you allowed all of those other conditions to get on you in the first place which is why a PR or UC/GI does more than it appears.

Now I speak of WvW here but play it regularly and yes sometimes I come up against a condition build my current thief has issues with at any given time but after a loss I can flip a few traits around and have much better success which hardly means I win every fight (nor should it)

If you lose every single battle no matter how traited and no matter how skilled the opponent is than yes there an issue, but I do not think that the case.

I also agree with deceiver that the change to SE makes it better as a cleanse. I would hate to drop into shadows and remove a weakness stack even as burn stacks are killing me.

Cynz.9437:

I honestly think the source of the issue (the amount of condi flying around and how easy it is applied now) should be fixed and not tools to deal with it. I dare to say that this game was more fun and made more sense in the past when stun breaks, condi cleanse but as well condi applications and CCs were scarce and came at rather high (opportunity) costs.

+1

Everything is too “spammy” now. Chain cc, condition overloads, and on the reverse side near-endless stability. Thing’s used to require timed use and thought, now its just keep shooting down the death star’s reactor core until it blows up. I miss the days of luke ; ;