Guild Wars 2

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I think their ultimate solution is to try and drive people away from conditions until they % of players using them is small enough for them to say the time spent fixing it would be better spent elsewhere.

That’s quite cynical, though I do understand your frustration.

It would be beneficial to hear an updated response from ArenaNet – I feel quite silly for having invested in Ascended Rabid Trinkets and do feel as though I need to re-roll to meet my personal goals in-game (as power Necro is not a playstyle that I enjoy).

Rhyse.8179:

Nobody ever seems to think about this- everything is a condition. Is it any wonder that the PVP meta requires as much condition removal as you can squeeze onto your character? Control, DPS, interrupts, debuffs- it’s all done with conditions, and it’s all countered by one single mechanic. The “move-observe opponent-countermove” process that’s so important to pvp is strangled by this one mechanic.

That is a fantastic point. It’s not so much rock-paper-scissors – evade counters power and cleanse counts conditions. As much as I love GW2 I’m really frustrated by these fundamental flaws.

Hi everyone,

I’m quite new to Guild Wars 2 and absolutely love the game. However I have some serious concerns regarding design decisions that have been made and would like to foster a discussion in order to properly understand the implications.

There is a lot of discussion around “the zerker meta” and claiming that defensive stats need a buff. I’ll leave that discussion for others. I’m much more interested in discussing the failings of the condition system and its impact on the meta.

At the moment I’m playing a Necromancer focusing on Conditions. I find the build exceptional in PVP and small group/solo WvW roaming. However it is quite apparent that conditions have some fundamental problems in Guild Wars 2 that render the play-style sub-optimal.

I expect that everything I write below is well known to many experienced/veteran GW2 players. I apologise if this post is seen as a waste of time.

Condition Stacks & Diminishing Returns
As a condition-based Necromancer, stacking Bleeds is one of my primary modes of damage. I take pride in the fact that I can stack bleeds on a Champion to 16-25 solo. As soon as you add another bleed-stacking class, my individual DPS is reduced. This is even more pronounced in world events – my upper DPS limit is essentially bound to my auto attack damage which, when built for +Condition Damage, is extremely poor.

Ultimately this reduces my role in World Events to dealing with adds – not a huge problem (and something I enjoy) but if all condition players start dealing with the adds, then we’re facing the same problem just to a lesser degree.

For duration-stacking conditions (e.g. Burning) the damage is not necessarily hard-capped, but your damage is suffering from diminishing returns – i.e., your DPS cannot be improved by adding more burning, but at least the damage is not completely lost.

Analysis: Condition damage in GW2 simply doesn’t scale in groups. There is a hard limit on what is possible – the single-target DPS output of 5 condition-spec players is likely to be quite similar to 2.

From what I can understand, the lack of individual condition stacks on a target is due to a technology issue – which I can understand after seeing 100s of people DPSing down Claw of Jormag for example.

However, would it not be possible to convert some percentage of “lost” DPS into direct damage? For example if I were to Scepter auto-attack (as a Necromancer) on a target with 25 bleeds, could I not get some appropriate % of the bleed damage I would have dealt instantaneously applied?

This would encourage the use of my condition-applying skills even when the stacks are capped out as I would be providing significant DPS. It would also aid in destroying structures, which is extremely frustrating when wielding Rabid gear.

Keep in mind that this isn’t ideal – I’d prefer my conditions are applied individually – but the concession to having a viable and worthy place in the PVE meta would outweigh my misgivings.

Impact on the Meta and the Community
All multiplayer games with a competitive element will appeal to optimizers (or min-maxers). I consider myself an optimizer – the fact that my preferred playstyle is almost irrelevant for some content (e.g. most comps for 5 man content, world bosses, doing anything with structures in a reasonable amount of time) causes me a lot of grief.

It’s no surprise that Berserker gear and builds that best make use of it are popular. It’s also no surprise that for any serious/dedicated player, maximizing Power is the only viable option.

For a game about horizontal progression, rendering a popular playstyle as irrelevant due to design decisions/technical limitations simply isn’t good enough. The fact that I agonise daily over playing my condition Necromancer (“but it’s terrible in more than half of the content”) is not endearing me to the game, despite everything I love about it.

Analysis: With condition damage essentially hard-capped in group content and the natural desire to finish content as quickly as possible, condition-based builds and the players who enjoy them are ostracised from dedicated/efficient groups. For those who enjoy the playstyle, but also want to optimize, this creates an untenable situation and makes certain aspects of the game very difficult to enjoy.

With the lack of viability of condition damage, power (and Berserker gear specifically) is the only viable choice. This in turn limits the range of each class – their weapon, trait and utility selections all have to conform to sustain/support or power. This in term reduces the meta and restricts creativity, freedom and enjoyment.

Questions:
Do I have a fundamental misunderstanding of the condition system?
What are ArenaNet doing to fix these problems?
How do you feel as a condition-based player in the current meta?

Hi all,

I’m new to GW2, playing since mid December 2013.

I have heard rumblings that an s/tPVP build of Engineer known as Condition Bunker Engineer is one of the most viable builds in the current meta. However, I am struggling to find information regarding it.

Some of the choices are obvious – Pistol/Shield, Nightmare (or similar) runes, sustain utilities. Unfortunately, I’m not yet familiar enough with the game systems to feel comfortable winging my build completely – I will definitely customize a build to match my personal playstyle, but I do feel the need for a skeleton build and some discussion regarding combos so that I can start from somewhere.

From scratch, what I’ve come up with is this.

Although already imposing on you, I’d also like to understand the Stun Break and Condi removal capability of the engineer – I know that Elixir S is a stun break and Elixir R provides both Stun Break and AoE Condition Removal. I’m not clear what the other viable choices are though.

Any and all advice would be much appreciated. Thank you for your time!