Guild Wars 2

L Step.8659:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

L Step.8659:

and their damage passively ticks so they don’t always need to land something.

If they don’t land something, they don’t tick. Funny, that’s the same as with Power builds.

What’s ticking isn’t their latest attacks, it’s what they already hit you with. Just like the damage you’ve already taken isn’t affected by future events.

You know what I meant. The condi damage class, if given mobility/sustain can keep their damage ticking while a zerker class cannot. It’s easier to mitigate normal damage than condi damage for most classes, not everyone main necros like us.

Toughness reduces incoming damage, vitality gives more health, and heals can fix the health lost. it’s true, there’s a lot of ways to reduce normal damage.

however, condition clears can mitigate condition damage before it even happens
I mean, you literally take a damage over time stat, and then make it bad over time.
(I know that most classes have condition clears – heck, humans get a nice in-built one – and quite a few high level enemies in PvE have them too. (not that the cap didn’t mess that up already.))
or, kill the CD user before they can get their stacks up.

I would vehemently argue that conditions are much easier to mitigate condition damage than normal damage.

just gonna point out again that I’m more or less exclusively talking PvE here, I don’t do much WvW or PvP, and I recognise that these issues aren’t apparent in those spheres.

another complaint I’d raise is how hard it can be to actually do conditions. every weapon does normal damage on most of it’s skills, and all normal damage skills also inherently do crit damage. however, it’s difficult to find weapons with more than a couple of damaging conditions.
take my main for example. a Thief running Dagger/Dagger and Pistol/Pistol (though I am looking at the shortbow too)
the D/D combo gives two damaging conditions – the first skill gives poison at the end of its 3-part chain, and the 3 skill – death blossom – lands a nice 3 stacks of bleed on the enemy. however, that’s it. the 2 skill does vulnerability, but since that doesn’t affect conditions, it’s only good in a hybrid build. the 4 skill provides a ranged attack, as well as a cripple. but then again, that’s normal damage. finally, the 5th skill is a stealth – appropriate for a thief, but still only normal damage. in total, I have two damaging moves, assuming I build conditions, one which does slow damage over time (since poison stacks duration) and one which, while doing decent damage (3 stacks of bleed per use is nice) can be hampered by the jump that goes with it (death blossom has sent me off of far, far too many cliffs.)
in the end, not a particularly great selection of condition damage.

it’s now late and I’m worried that I may have strayed from my original point into a rant, so I’m gonna leave it there.

as a returning player (I kinda stopped playing at the end of the living story season 1, and came back recently), I have to say that I don’t think the NPE was an improvement at all.

I think the upsides would be:
- the loot from level-up rewards is nice
- weapon skills have a lower ceiling (old method could be very grindy on some occasions (looking at you elementalist))

the downsides, which go from disappointing to occasionally enraging:
– the change to stat increases. i know the new way is meant to feel more “rewarding”, but instead, it feel jittery, leaving you under-skilled between skill increase levels. I preferred the older, smoother methods.
– the bottom line for weapon skills has sky rocketed. this is where new players are gonna be, and several levels of monotony in weapon skills isn’t incentive for anyone to keep playing.
– not being able to rally a low levels? that’s just punishing new players. it’s not cool, and it’s not helpful. same with underwater combat and such.
– the way the story now works – ignoring the inconsistencies and plot holes – is just boring. like the stat increases, you took a beautiful, smooth thing and turned it into a spiky mess.
– increased level requirements for traits and other such things. for new players, this probably doesn’t help much. for older players, it’s just irritating.

overall:
- you took a lot of smooth things and made them far less smooth. this is bad.
– for the story, it ruins the flow, ruins the feel, and leaves people less interested. that’s
not what a story should do.
– for stats – what’s the point of levelling up if you’re not a little better?
- you took a lot of content and placed silly restrictions on it. new releases should add
stuff, but you took away what we had. you tried to fix what wasn’t broken.

mostly, I just don’t get why you’d take what was a wonderful and functional part of the game, and make it uninteresting, restrictive, and less fun – especially when there are far more urgent issues with the game – things that need fixed.

I’ve not really followed much on GW2 outside of in-game stuff – are Anet usually good at communicating with the community? do they usually fix this sort of thing quickly/well/at all?

pretty good summary OP, it’s well thought out – the point about the ramp up time sounds about right too.

I would argue the importance of the cap though. the cap stops condition damage players from working well as a group, and while I understand that a balanced mix is always nice, no other builds suffer this issue. as a condition damage builder, I stop contributing much once there’s one or two other condition characters around, which is a mild pain in dungeons, and a constant headache in group events.

I feel like condition damage is only good in a very narrow space:

Weak Monsters – about as effective as pure damage, but slower (ramp up time etc)
Medium Monsters – relatively decent, but still not as quick or effective as pure damage.
Strong Monsters – assuming there are other condition users about (and there usually are) you might as well be throwing rocks.

the only place I’ve heard of Conditions winning out is against high toughness monsters, and they don’t seem to be widespread enough to balance it all out.

Ropechef.6192:

little old now, as it was pushed down the pages…

but worth the read.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Condition-Damage-in-PvE-Overview/first

I saw that. it’s a good read, but I think the guy underestimates the importance of the cap. I feel that the cap punishes condition damage players for grouping up – which feels silly in an MMO.

I’ve noticed, read and heard quite a few complaints, suggestions, or arguments concerning condition damage. I don’t want to get in to details here, though I’ll admit I think it needs work.

My question is:

A) is there a general consensus within the community that Condition Damage is in need of some kind of change/rework/buffing/etc in order to be viable/equal/fun?*

B) if yes to the above, does Anet know/acknowledge this? have they said they think it needs work, or have they said they’re working on it?

*I mostly refer to my sphere of play, which is PvE. I don’t know much about the PvP/WvW balances.

please note, I’m not looking for discussions on why, what or how. I just want to know if there’s a general feeling, and if so, what’s being done about it. I’m happy to discuss details in another thread.

timmyf.1490:

Noted. My point was simply that players who routinely ignore incentives are now complaining about incentives. They should do as they’ve always done: ignore the incentives and Play How They Want.

the thing is that now playing how they want gives fewer rewards than it did yesterday.

also, do they do what they’ve always done: play how they want, or do they do what they’ve always done: complete the daily. it used to be that these two weren’t mutually exclusive, and now they are.

it mostly comes down to something that used to work fine for a lot of people no longer works as well for a lot of them, and they’re gonna get angry about it. imagine if you had to start paying more for the same internet you get now?

I personally can deal with the changes – but it does feel like Anet is fixing things that ain’t broke, while a lot of more serious issues get ignored.

just wondering, why isn’t there one of these? I know Condition Damage is already kind of sucky in PvE (and I still play it), but despite the “play who you want, how you want” thing, and despite the fact that Condition Caps already make Conditions inferior to crits, how come we don’t even get an equivelant to ’zerker armour?

with all the differences between crits and conditions, I kinda get an “all play styles are equal. but some are more equal than others” vibe from this game sometimes.

again, I’m mostly (completely) talking about in PvE here, not sure how it works out in PvP.

I can’t help but notice – as a thief using dual daggers – that anyone hoping to craft a pair of one-handed weapons is going to have to put in up to twice as much materials as someone who crafts a two-handed weapon. for example, a warrior using two swords will need twice the materials as a warrior using a greatsworkittenhe only one who thinks this is a little unfair? there’s no benefit to dual-wielding over a two-handed weapon, so I don’t see why it’s harder to make.

I’ve noticed this for a while, but now that I’m starting on my ascended weapons, it’s really starting to bug me. why is it that I’ll have to put in twice the work for my weapons than another player, just to reach the same end result?

am I just being silly here, or is this an actual problem? what do you guys think?