Guild Wars 2

Yes and no. No, because normally you are in Death Shroud, where all healing is blocked. The nice thing is that the trait does not appear to try to heal you, so you don’t take up part of the 5-target cap.

Yes, because if you start Life Transfer just as you are about to run out of life force, you will continue the channel after leaving death shroud and heal yourself on each remaining pulse.

glaphen.5230:

MM Necromancer has been buffed.

Only buff to MM since launch has been AI improvements (should never be complained about) and Vampiric Master getting a damage component (of about 70/hit, mind you).

Valinor.9647:

why not add another buff.. something like Protection but – condi damage
or a -condi duration weapon stat

Because nothing multiplies condition damage. Protection and Weakness balance out the fact direct damage has multipliers in the form of vulnerability, Sigil of Force/Slaying/Impact/Night, traits, and runes. Condition damage lacks these entirely.

As such, condition damage is far more predictable: a bleed from 1800 condition damage always deals exactly the same damage per tick, for example. But it has a significantly lower maximum.

Broscience.8412:

Because the targets are moving, dodging etc. I’m not saying PVT can’t outdamage a Dire warrior in a fight because that’s not the case, but it won’t do it all the time like on a static target. Do you understand or do I have to explain that in 10 more posts?

All right, you finally made a clear, concise statement. Now, what remains sounds pretty balanced to me: two different specs, both focused on durability, putting out similar levels of damage in different ways: one up front, one over time. Since either can out-damage the other, that variance comes down to play on both the damage dealer and the target.

Yeah, Necros are GODS underwater. Only Rangers and the occasional great mesmer can hold up against us there.

Broscience.8412:

Context says that PVT warrior will not outdamage a Dire warrior all the time in a fight, as it does on a training dummy.

Tell me, if it does on a training dummy, why not in a real fight? Because a person will dodge? Because they will kite? What stops them from doing that against the Dire warrior as well?

Broscience.8412:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Yes you are. You’re assuming that the target makes no moves to avoid the damage from a Dire build as evidenced by

Broscience.8412:

Yeah, on a dummy that stands still for the entire time but that won’t be the case in an actual fight.

No.. I’m not. In none of my posts do I mention that. I expect both players to mitigate damage och deal as much damage as possible in a fight. But even then you can’t say that X does more damage then Y since a fight is depending on several factors.

Evidenced by what? My first comment simply states that no one will just stand still and eat all damage on purpose in a fight.

Context says you were talking specifically about power being out-damaged by conditions on anything that wasn’t just standing there.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Yeah, reduce the amount of damage conditions do over X seconds so that total is less than the amount of damage that direct damage attacks do instantly.

Balanced.

Yes that would be balanced. If you have extreme defence through dire gear, then your offensive output should be a lot weaker to compensate.

He said “direct damage” not “Zerker”. You can get equal durability as Dire in a power build.

Broscience.8412:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Why do you assume that a Soldier’s geared person doesn’t have a ranged weapon or the target doesn’t avoid the Dire user’s attacks?

Im not assuming anything. I’m implying that a Soldier warrior won’t out dps a Dire warrior all the time in an actual fight.

Yes you are. You’re assuming that the target makes no moves to avoid the damage from a Dire build as evidenced by

coglin.1867:

coglin.1867:

A soldiers gear warrior will out damage a dire gear warrior all day long and twice on sundays. Both of those geat sets have the exact same HP and armor.

Yeah, on a dummy that stands still for the entire time but that won’t be the case in an actual fight.

So you are saying that against a condition build, they make no effort to defend themselves in an actual fight, or significantly less effort.

EDIT: as an aside, I have no idea why that second quote is being attributed to colgin when. Odd forum quirk, I guess.

Broscience.8412:

coglin.1867:

A soldiers gear warrior will out damage a dire gear warrior all day long and twice on sundays. Both of those geat sets have the exact same HP and armor.

Yeah, on a dummy that stands still for the entire time but that won’t be the case in an actual fight.

Why do you assume that a Soldier’s geared person doesn’t have a ranged weapon or the target doesn’t avoid the Dire user’s attacks?

bigmonto.4215:

There is a reason why condition builds are the meta.

Except they aren’t and never have been. Unless you are talking about, say, Necromancer builds? Who would have thought that the “masters of conditions” class would be good with conditions?

Given that a condition spec should be capable of surviving long enough for their damage to actually work, the 10 seconds maximum should be able to be gotten through.

Yes, it’s a serious edge in such a fight, but it doesn’t automatically mean you win.

Shaogin.2679:

Well this topic got derailed fast, but not too far off topic I suppose. Quick question though Spoj since you tested all this, from a PvE perspective does LB out dps dagger once you start piercing at least two targets per shot?

Oh, easily. Dagger does higher DPS, but not twice as much as Life Blast will. As soon as Unyielding Blast and a second target come into the equation, Life Blast is the strongest auto necros have.

Remicity.8430:

Also why is the engineer in your example doing 700dps but the opponent doing 0? Is he standing there doing nothing?

Well, if the Confusion is doing no damage, then most likely. Not necessarily, though.

killahmayne.9518:

If you lose 25% crit damage, suddenly a 10K Backstab becomes 7.5K, which is the difference between a target staying to fight, or a target being forced to blow cooldowns and panicking. A

Not quite. Let’s say you had 30% crit damage (so, just from traits). This means your crits deal 180% damage. This is getting changed to 300 Ferocity, which is 20% crit damage, so 170% damage of the normal attack. On a crit, you are only losing ~5.6% damage. So, that 5k hit is now a 4722 hit.

Now, before accounting for Runes, sigils, specific traits, etc., a full Ascended Berserker set with 30 points in the crit damage line has 101% crit damage, meaning crits deal 2.51 times their normal attack damage. After the patch, this same build will have 1045 Ferocity, which is 69% crit damage bonus. These crits will be dealing 2.09 times the normal attack damage. Your crits will thus be dealing ~83% of the damage as before.

So, that 10k backstab with maxed crit damage (pre-runes and consumables) now will still deal 8.3k after the patch.

Do you know why those numbers are higher for conditions? Those numbers are based off of the average, non-crit damage of hitting a 2600 armor target. They also do not take into account any conditional modifiers, such as vulnerability or traits that give bonus damage if X is met.

So, those tooltip values are based off of what is literally the worst case for a power build, compared to condition numbers which show the best case.

As for a condition build being able to run around playing defensively while their conditions work, that is almost true. The thing is, a Power build would have already killed the target and thus wouldn’t have to run around avoiding repercussions.

How would you feel if you played a power build, killed them, and they still got to fight you for a bit, and even possibly reversing your kill? Would suck, right? That’s exactly how condition builds actually work.

Yup. Maybe later I’ll do one in my other armor set.

Also, minions are affected, too.

Meglobob.8620:

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180

I see you are on a NA server, I am on a EU server and in Europe the condition meta is massive…except for thieves, mesmers the other classes all use massive condition application:-

Engineers condition users
Rangers condition users
Necro condition users

Warriors/Eles/Guardians are 50/50 ish split between condition/direct damage…

So the current meta in Europe is conditions…

That would explain it, yes. That said, I have to wonder about the Guardians being a 50/50 split between condition damage and direct. Condition Damage guardian just isn’t viable. They can’t help but apply burning, but I don’t see how it could be popular in EU.

Meglobob.8620:

oZii.2864:

Meglobob.8620:

Won’t the condition meta in sPvP be a lot stronger after the 15.4.14?

Looking at the changes so far announced, the condition meta seems to be getting a overall buff…

Condition removal is actually being nerfed for several classes too…

Last I checked the top teams run 1-2 condition classes at the most. Only removal I am aware of being nerfed is lyssa runes.

Some traits that counter conditions are being nerfed by as much as 50% and healing is being nerfed on some classes. Perplexity runes are being introduced. There is even a new trait that counters all crit dam %. Lets not forget direct damage from crits over all classes across the entire game is being nerfed 10%+…

Certainly, looks like a big boost to the current condition meta to me…

PvP, crit damage isn’t being touched except on Celestial amulet. Healing Signet is the only “healing” I’m aware of that’s being nerfed (and 8% won’t really be noticable), the crit immune trait is on the squishiest class in the game and locks them into a pathetic damage output attunement if they want the benefit. Oh, and what condition-protection traits are getting nerfed? I have seen nothing suggesting that, unless you mean the Mesmer and Guardian “Vigor on-crit” traits.

I don’t see any change that would deal with a non-existent meta. The so-called “condition meta” never existed in tPvP.

jportell.2197:

Yes dodging avoids both attacks but at somepoint in a fight no matter what someone is going to get a hit in. Esp if it’s dire v. soldier… That won’t be a one hit wonder. … And dire will win because several attacks that apply conditions apply more than one…. Attacks that do direct damage do just that and they don’t even crit.

The skills that apply more than one condition are on similar cooldowns as direct damage skills that apply much higher amounts damage. Condition builds don’t magically have more frequent, high-damage attacks than power builds.

Facing a Dire user is no different than facing a Soldier’s geared person. You just don’t see your health drop immedietly when you get hit. This last part, by the way, is the real reason people think condition damage is OP: they don’t realize how much they actually got hit for.

I find it very strange that none of the top PvP players are claiming condition damage is overpowered. Perhaps there’s a reason for that…

@MonMalthias: I don’t follow. Why should every attack that deals conditions have a cooldown, but not every attack that deals direct damage?

I play condition builds a lot, and I have to say, THIS IS A HORRID IDEA. The game is balanced around tradeoffs. Merging two stats (doesn’t even matter which two stats it is) causes massive problems in the game. In this case, it also would mean that Condition Damage becomes exponentially scaling: each point being worth more than every prior point. Again, a terrible design decision. It’s one thing to have multiplicative scaling as you do with Power/Precision/Ferocity, but exponential scaling is an absolute nightmare for attempting balance.

Cush.4063:

Beat me to it. I love how everyone is completely ignoring this post. Makes sense because the post is so true.

Except it isn’t. Every single point can, and has been, proven to either be false or a non-issue.

Conditions are just way too easy to apply.

So is Direct Damage, but you aren’t complaining about that for some reason.

It doesn’t matter if soldiers is better than dire or w/e. It’s the fact that it’s a lot more difficult to apply direct damage than conditions as well as the fact that you can spec defensively with it.

Funny, you can spec just as defensively as a Power build and still out-do conditions on the damage front.

I mean how do you dodge a necro mark?

Double-tap a movement key by default.

Just guess? Which mark should you dodge and how do you know the difference?

You should dodge Reaper’s Mark and it has a very distinct animation. Has had it for the last 6 months, so if you still think it’s difficult to tell, frankly, you need to get your eyes checked. Or you’re fighting Asura, but they are an issue regardless of class or build.

There are so many ways to apply conditions as well. I mean the post speaks for itself

Even more ways to apply direct damage. Post ends up spouting a bunch of opinions, really.

On necros, the typical 30/20/0/0/20 Dhuumfire build in rabid gear has a 46% crit chance in Exotic gear (Rabid crests in jewelry) and Runes of the Undead. This is not optimal gear, but it is decent and fairly cheap to aquire, so it’s reasonable to work from. Also added is a Master Tuning Crystal and a Koi Cake (again, fairly cheap). Running Hemophilia (because there aren’t many other good options at Adept Master in Curses), the trait Barbed Precision alone adds an average of 113.5464 damage to every attack. That one trait alone is a 13% increase in a condition necro’s auto-attack damage.

For comparison, a full Exotic Dire build (running exquisite Carrion gems) with Runes of Scavenging (same trait and food setup) has a 14% crit chance. Despite having higher condition damage (a difference of ~30 on each bleed from the auto attack), it only scores an average of 35.6664 extra damage per attack from Barbed Precision. That’s an average of ~80 damage per attack lost from investing into Dire gear instead of Rabid, and we haven’t even included the crit damage multiplier, nor any sigils or other traits. Barbed Precision is only that low because of its exceedingly short bleed duration, but it is still a very noticeable DPS increase on its own.

Sigil of Torment: already has its own cooldown that does not interfere with Sigil of Earth. Has since its release.

Yes. It gets used. A lot.

glaphen.5230:

As I said when you posted this moronic list last time, NO ONE USES THESE TRAITS OR SIGILS.

And there went any credibility you had. Here, I’ll show you why you’re wrong:

Empowering Might — You and nearby allies gain might when you land a critical hit.
Precise Strikes — Chance to cause bleeding on critical hits.
Rending Strikes — You have a chance to cause vulnerability on critical hits.
Incendiary Powder — Critical hits inflict burning.
Sharpshooter — Critical hits have a chance to cause bleeding.
Go for the Eyes — Critical hits with rifles have a chance to inflict blindness.
Precise Sights — You have a chance to cause vulnerability on critical hits
Companion’s Might — Critical hits grant might to your pet.
Sharpened Edges — Chance to cause bleeding on critical hits.
Sundering Strikes — Critical hits have a chance to cause vulnerability.
Burning Precision — Critical hits have a chance to cause burning.
Weak Spot — Chance to cause vulnerability on critical hits.
Arcane Precision — Skills have a chance to apply a condition on critical hits.
Barbed Precision — Critical hits have a chance to cause bleeding.
Withering Precision — Apply weakness on critical hits.

Sigil of Earth — chance to cause Bleeding
Sigil Of Torment —- Chance to apply torment.

All of these are great benefit to condition builds. Even the Vulnerability stacking ones as it makes covering so much easier. Now, if we remove the Might stacking traits, those that apply vulnerability, and the crap that is Withering Precision, we are still left with 7 traits and 2 sigils that supposedly “nobody uses in a condition build” and require Precision. In fact, all of those remaining items (and some that were removed from the list) are extremely common in condition builds.

Azukas.1426:

Sons.5493:

Azukas.1426:

Pure condi builds take precious time to get their killswhich result in having to get dem stacks back up.

Nope, i’d even dare to say some of the burst cond builds out there have more burst than some power builds.

I haven’t seen it yet, but I will readily admit that my playtime is rather limited to most on here though.

He is correct, but only because not all power builds are meant to burst. Some are intended for sustained damage (such as any necro Power build).

However, compare any condi burst to any power burst, and the power build blows conditions out of the water like Mythbusters blows up trucks.

I guess since nobody knows that this recipe is indeed unavailable now.

Truthfully, most of Scarlet’s armies are pretty well-designed on the NPC front. Aetherblades use boons, CC, and even invulnerabilities, Toxic Alliance hit rapidly, use/cleanse conditions, and evade attacks/use reflections, Twisted Watchworks use a mix of CC, conditions, and direct damage, and Molten Alliance compliments buffs and vuln stacking with damage and blinds/CC.

The biggest issue is that most of the bosses are not like this. Reworking just the bosses is much easier than reworking all of PvE, but enemies that do these things need to become more common.

Maskaganda.2043:

easy access condi spam buttons on short cooldowns such a corrupt boon or spite could use a nerf, I agree, but saying dire is the ultimate set for roamers is just cluelessness.

Corrupt Boon: 40 second cooldown, effect depends on target
Signet of Spite: 60 second cooldown, will not kill on its own, one condition gets removed with any auto attack, two of the remaining ones are probably already on you.

I wouldn’t call either of those “condi spam buttons on short cooldowns.”

I’m hoping that necro gets torch before sword, personally. Some of the torch skins just scream necro (like Occultist’s Flame).

Kukchi.6173:

Why play a warrior when guardian does everything better?

Because unlike a Guardian, a Warrior can do it all at once. Guardians have to specialize.

Coglin, while you are correct that Dire < Soldier’s for DPS, he does have a point that you never actually link the numerical evidence you are using. I ask that you do so.

glaphen.5230:

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

warriors need fear as they lack of cc skills
and fear can be stopped by stun breaker
how ever every other class with access to it has longer fear duration than necro

Necromancer can chain 10+ seconds for 11k damage with just the fear.

Hardly. Even with +100% Fear duration, every active necro fear chained together is 6 seconds total. The only way it can go higher is if you let yourself be in a position for them to run you back and forth through Spectral Wall. While this does require significant skill on the necro’s part, it’s also a bad move as a single stunbreak interrupts it.

Plus, Terror can only deal that much damage if there are other conditions on you. Not difficult for a necro to accomplish, but saying that Terror does that much “alone” is misleading.

Healing Signet is shut down less by Poison than most heals in the game. Only Consume Conditions, Hide in Shadows, and Antitoxin spray are affected less because they remove the condition before the heal takes place. The reason why is because with all of the other heals, there is a strategic moment to apply poison to reduce its effectiveness. Healing Signet has no such moment: you must apply perma-poison to keep it in line. Only a few classes are even capable of such a feat.

All that the change is going to do is fix a bug. Fear is supposed to count as an interrupt, but until Runes of Perplexity, nobody really cared that it didn’t. Only Warriors could cause fear and get something for interrupting before that.

Well, unless you count Daily Skill Interrupter, which is really tough to get on a necro.

You see Hambow everywhere in WvW. Roaming, zergs, you name it. Everywhere. You’ll probably see it in TDM PvP as well because of the great AoE.

It’s not that other specs are weak, it’s that Hambow is so much damage and control in one package that nothing else is even considered. Warrior has multiple viable specs in every game mode, but Hambow is so broken that it overshadows them all except in PvE where only DPS matters.

BlackBeard.2873:

Yes, top-end critical damage does need a reduction (this is a good thing), but condi specs such as this (that are high reward:low risk) need to have either their capability to pressure reduced (so that they need to keep attacking to apply pressure) or their inherent survivability reduced.

Or, people need to learn how to combat them. A burst is a burst, regardless of if it kills you instantly or 20 seconds down the road. Recognize and respond to it in the same way. Negate the burst and you force your opponent to play defensively until their cooldowns come up. Condition burst is actually preferable just because cleansing after the fact is an option as well.

Junkpile.7439:

Why can’t you use condi when you do your hipster roaming thing and power when you zerg?

Gear issues. Even after they do the free retraiting, that’s a lot of gear to lug around on the battlefield when you need space for siege blueprints and loot.

And it’s very common for roamers to join or split from a zerg.

For necros it’s pretty important too. Barbed Precision adds a LOT of damage. Mesmers do need it even more, though.

Jayce.5632:

Call me crazy but I thought conditionmancers needed more ways to build life force, not siphons. Seems like a completely missed opportunity to me, seeing that powermancers won’t really benefit from this trait.

Either one, really. Condition necros generate enough life force to deal with bursts, but sustained damage is a huge problem for them, which is a problem considering it’s supposed to be an attrition style. Given the lack of incentive to staying in death shroud for condition necros (and ANet doesn’t seem to want to give us that incentive), the preferred form of sustain is regaining actual health.

And why do Powermancers need to benefit from it? I don’t follow the reasoning there.

The tooltips always round to the nearest 1/4 second. That said, this still supports Lingering Curse actually being larger than a 33% boost, as that should show 6-3/4 seconds on the tooltip.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Blood Is Power lasts for 62seconds with this build so if I ever wanted to be extra annoying there’s that little gem.

Can’t. Blood Is Power can’t break the +100% duration cap on conditions. Capable of going to 1 minute (though it won’t actually last that long), but no higher.

My comment on it being the Power/Condition Duration line was more in response to Gryph.

However, I highly doubt that the amount will cause any sorts of issues, even in PvP. 2kcdps returns a whopping…100hps. That will make a difference in sustain, but not a massive one, and as soon as they cleanse, it’s gone. You will have to build it up again.

Wanze.8410:

Did you purchase Urmaugs recipe during escape/battle of LA or later?

After. Actually about 5 minutes after I got Evon’s. He’s still in the Lornar’s Pass camp selling things.

Ellyna, though, is back in Lion’s Arch at the graveyard and doesn’t sell anything anymore. She’s the only one of the three that was moved.

Doctor Orderly MD PhD DDS.7625:

Fear not! If you take the new Spite grandmaster trait you can make your deathly claws and necrotic grasps move 100% faster!

Wrong profession. Only Rangers get grandmasters that bad.

I decided to pick up the three station recipies and picked up the maitenence oil and sharpening stones, but the merchant selling the recipe for the tuning crystal, Ellyna Graidy, no longer sells anything at all. Does someone else now carry this recipe, or is it impossible to get now?

…how do you think it triggers?

Here’s a question: how does the new burst crits trait interact with Sword’s burst skill? Every strike crits?

The only place where I could see it being useful, though. For everything else, there’s Sigil of Intelligence.

Dadnir.5038:

1000 damage/s on a condi build is really weak. we can easyly keep on a 2k/s pressure on single target and epidemy grant us this on up to 5 target… that’s already a 500hp/s .

Which requires a lot of effort from the necro to maintain in addition to requiring 5 enemies that are capable of hitting the necro. Even against a single target, 500hps won’t keep you alive on its own, and unlike Warriors, necros can’t avoid damage for extended periods of time to heal up as the necro’s method of doing that blocks all healing.

It is not going to break game balance. Please think about what these optimal conditions actually mean before you cry about balancing around them.

And Spite is not the “Power line.” It is the “Power and Condition Duration” line. Dhuumfire is currently the only trait in the tree that even used condition damage. Parasitic Contagion will be a second. Each of those traits fulfills different roles for a condition necro (more damage vs. more sustain). There is very little they could have put in for Power builds that would be picked over Close To Death.

It’s actually almost never used. 1% per three seconds is quite slow, and the active is rarely useful anymore (since they increased the cast time to 3 seconds).