Condition Cleanses are the condition equivalent of toughness. Toughness mitigates damage taken once all other forms of avoidance fail such as those blocks dodges and invulnerabilities. It has one great advantage over a cleanse in that it is working “all the time”.
A cleanse does the same thing against a condition. It mitigates the damage a Condition already applied will do. Its advantage is it can mitigate 100 percent of that condition damage. The downside is there a finite amount of cleanses. This means in game terms “toughness” is EASIER then a cleanse as there no need to time just when that toughness will be used .
Conditions ignore toughness. Power damage ignores condition cleanses. The more utilities and traits I take to cleanse conditions , the greater the advantage a power build gains over me.
Any build can avoid Condition damage applications just as they can avoid power damage applications. Whether a skill is unblockable when applying a condition is immaterial as skills are also unblockable when applying direct damage.
Conditions are damage over time meaning in order to work it required that a Condition build have more sustain.
The vast majority of my time is in WvW. Power damage builds are about 80 percent of what I see. Of my 16 toons only 4 use conditions as I find power superior. Condition damage builds are “easier” to play but if people are as good as they claim to be those builds can be dealth with. There are a number of professions I find “easier” to play, that does not translate into them being OP.
When it comes to doing outright damage Power rules and is superior to condition damage. That a condition build can trait for toughness/vitality while doing damage is moot. I do that on a power build. Yes in order to do that I have to give up outright damage for that survivability but that the very reason people take condition builds over power. They know they will do less damage but will survive longer. Without that extended survivability they will die in seconds to a power build and were that the case there would be no reason to take a condition build over power.
The real issue with Condition builds is the same as it is with power builds. There might be certain individual attacks that are “overtuned”. Some suggest COR does too much damage. Some suggest True shot does too much damage. Some suggest DH traps does too much damage. Some suggest vault does too much damage. While offering no opinion on each of these skills when one debates whether are not the damge too high on these attacks, we do not conclude that “all power attacks are too powerful and power needs to be toned down”. We address each of these skills individually.
The same applies to Conditions and the fallacy of the argument that “Conditions need to be toned down” is made evident , as others have pointed out, that only a small handful of classes can make truly competitive Condition builds. If it was as bad as claimed than those would be the only builds we see.
If there are certain skills that are too powerful in their application of conditions than those can be looked at.
My own personal opinion is that a larger issue exists with AOE attacks be they condition or power as Pyriall suggested. Those attacks apply everything many working without a target.
