Guild Wars 2

Dr Ritter.1327:

omg there are so many important things that need to be updated and you are complaining you cant sit on chairs

On premise, I agree. I have no problems with the role-playing community, but if this takes even a second of real game development, no thanks.

This thread is about conditions in PvE and bleed cap, an issue that only affects PvE. Balance in PvP is irrelevant.

Any explanation that goes beyond technical limits is a waste because the developers have explicitly said that bleed cap exists only because of technical limits.

The most bizarre part of that long post is that it ignored the simple suggestion to keep a cap on Epidemic. Alternatively, Epidemic could be rethought entirely because one utility skill shouldn’t hold back every condition build in the game.

It will take most of the community a lot of time to catch up on the new metagame. It took this forum a month or so to start complaining about elementalists back in the day. It was also really bizarre seeing the forums complain so much about Hundred Blades when pre-buff warriors had long been deemed worthless by the high-rated community.

Case in point: The team that won MLG used a mesmer and didn’t have a necromancer.

Tequatl kind of throws the issue to the spotlight because it’s a fight in which any kind of DPS matters.

Join a Tequatl-killing guild.

I’ll start hopping on that thread.

Crit builds should be fixed on objects, but I don’t think the problem is really comparable. A berserker build loses roughly 50 percent of its damage on an object. A condition build loses 90 to 95 percent, depending on the weapon’s power coefficient.

Plus, most condition builds rely on crits for procs.

Like I’ve said in the original thread, I understand there’s a technical problem with bandwidth. But then the technical limitation should be designed around, not completely ignored. It’s not even like the problem is small right now; literally two condition builds can cap a boss and effectively ruin an encounter for dozens of people.

Epidemic could be capped at 25 bleeds. It should probably be capped at even less, to be honest.

Spirit rangers were on every team, too.

It’s interesting people consider necromancer and warrior S-tier when necromancer wasn’t on the winning team and warrior wasn’t on every team.

Still, like the OP, I attribute the persistence of guardians and even spirit rangers more on the game’s lack of diversity of bunkers than either build being truly overpowered. They just need to bring up staff elementalist and bunker engineer and we would get a lot more bunker diversity, just like we see with DPS today.

I transmuted my Tequatl trident — I picked it because I already had staff, scepter and dagger — because the green doesn’t match with my gear.

My necromancer supports it, too. :P

Besides being ridiculously unprofessional, blaming it on the players is probably the worst thing a game designer can do. If people are taking up guild vs. guild to the point that it’s “violating” his game type, then maybe guild vs. guild should be offered separately. The problem isn’t the players; it’s that game design is so lacking that people resort to shoddy alternatives.

I have killed him countless times without dying. It’s pretty easy with Plague and Summon Flesh Wurm.

You’re probably over-rolling. You can avoid a lot of red circles just by walking out. Keep that in mind.

I have no idea what the bandwidth limits are. I assume you don’t, either.

Why else would they keep a limitation that they’ve said hurts condition builds too much?

I give them a little more credit than that. I’ve seen them respond to controversial topics before, especially in the structured PvP forums.

Manuhell.2759:

Lopez.7369:

A lot of people haven’t seemed to notice that the event gives a raw 1.8 gold, which is pretty big by itself for 15 to 20 minutes of work, on top of the rares, blues, greens, champion bags, chance for a mini-pet and high chance for ascended gear and precursors,

Except it isn’t 15-20 minutes, since you’ve got to organize for it and the spawn has still got a variable window.
And the chance for ascended gears and precursors may be high in comparison of other sources…but is still a very rare chance. Same for its other unique drops.
And there is also a chance to fail involved.

Join a guild that kills Tequatl and guest in a random sever with the guild. It takes 15 to 20 minutes.

A lot of people haven’t seemed to notice that the event gives a raw 1.8 gold, which is pretty big by itself for 15 to 20 minutes of work, on top of the rares, blues, greens, champion bags, chance for a mini-pet and high chance for ascended gear and precursors,

I need an invite.

It wouldn’t be difficult content if everyone could do it.

I agree the overflow issues are ridiculous, though.

They have people working on technical problems on the side. If I remember correctly, it’s still a minority of their staff that’s working on Living Story.

Dese.1382:

Lopez.7369:

I actually linked the wrong build somehow. Here’s the real one: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;043Z-FKlHFJ0F4cJkJ0;9;4T;09T59B;40;059BINV0-NV0Ewk2Ewk25Bm

I don’t like Lich Form in PvP. It’s way too easy to avoid because the projectile’s homing is awful, and it’s not really necessary with Deathly Perception. Also, Plague stomp.

Horsing around with this build last night in T2 WvW, basically with the gear I had, Full Knights (Scholar Runes) and Ascended Cavalier Jewelry and the the result was surprising. I had several encounters where I instagibbed clothies and came out of a few outnumbered fights. Most people didn’t know what to do against a necro with daggers.

I didnt record but I also got a Spinal Shivers crit for 6k. The only downside I had was absolutely no get out of jail free cards, and this is bad in melee. But so is the life of a necro. I would like to see this playstyle mature a bit.

Yeah, the build is kind of bad for soloing, at least compared to condition builds, because of the lack of outs. But it’s amazing in a good group that peels.

Colin Johanson specifically said calculating bleeds takes a lot of bandwidth. I’m not really sure they need to go in further detail.

Kashrlyyk.5364:

Lopez.7369:

I really don’t understand why people are trying to think up different reasons. ArenaNet has explicitly said bleed cap exists because of technical limitations. The end.

The question is when ArenaNet is going to design around the limitation instead of ignoring it and neglecting build diversity.

Great, so you can answer my questions in my earlier post quoted below?

That is the part that confuses me. If 100 necromancer in Sparkfly cause 25 stacks of bleeding each to 100 enemies, can the server cope with that? If yes, than why can’t it cope with 2500 stacks on ONE enemy? And if no, than the limitation doesn’t work.

So what is the technical problem with condition stacking?

Sorry, I missed the post.

Do you really know if the server could handle that? Are you sure that interacting with 100 mobs that are spread out is the same as interacting with one mob in a focused area? What happens if those necromancers now Epidemic those 2,500 bleeds?

I obviously disapprove of the bleed cap, but I’m sure ArenaNet is telling the truth about it being a technical limitation, although that should warrant designing around the limitation, not the status quo of build diversity.

lupercaleb.6041:

if bleed didn’t have a cap, burning and poison would need to stack intensity, too

Maybe if they reworked how much damage one stack of burning does, but letting the current iteration of burning stack would be crazy. Poison, not so much, but there are reasons to prevent a healing debuff from doing too much damage.

In other words, you’re citing a different problem. Burning and poison are limited because of balance; bleeds are limited because of a technical limitation.

Bweaty.9187:

Lopez.7369:

Sagittario.8102:

I agree and it’s not just conditions, but also critical damage. All your precision, crit chance and crit damage are nothing.

This is a problem, but it honestly doesn’t belong in this thread. You do approximately half your damage without crits as a berserker build. Condition builds do like 5-10 percent if you count base damage on weapons that are built for conditions and therefore have really low base damage. It’s just not comparable.

What about my guard. Pre & Heals gear. His spec works around crit = vigor to himself & might to everyone around.
Not only dose he have the issue, of struggling to do enough damage to get loot because he’s support. But that he can’t maintain 16 stacks of might to allies, and now can’t even dodge enough to get thru the waves?

Crits should ‘work’ even if they do no more damage than a non-crit if they feel they have to ‘balance’ it by braking the way there damage class’s work rather than increasing his life pool.

I think crits should work on objects. My point is that bleed cap is a much bigger issue.

I really don’t understand why people are trying to think up different reasons. ArenaNet has explicitly said bleed cap exists because of technical limitations. The end.

The question is when ArenaNet is going to design around the limitation instead of ignoring it and neglecting build diversity.

Necromancers don’t need a survivability buff after the Spectral Armor and Death Shroud changes. If you are still having survivability issues, it’s likely a personal problem.

Dagger No. 1 is more damage than everything except Lich Form No. 1 and Death Shroud No. 1 with Deathly Perception. The immobilize is also amazing for landing wells and peeling.

I’m considering writing a guide for power builds to supplement my condition guides, but it’s a big undertaking, so no guarantees.

They probably wouldn’t include this kind of change in a patch preview, but a response would still be appreciated.

I actually linked the wrong build somehow. Here’s the real one: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;043Z-FKlHFJ0F4cJkJ0;9;4T;09T59B;40;059BINV0-NV0Ewk2Ewk25Bm

I don’t like Lich Form in PvP. It’s way too easy to avoid because the projectile’s homing is awful, and it’s not really necessary with Deathly Perception. Also, Plague stomp.

Stx.4857:

I don’t think its fine that technical limitations exist.. in this case.

What other game has an issue with DoT users using their DoTs? I mean thats just ridiculous.

No other game has to calculate condition duration and damage as extensively as Guild Wars 2, though.

Are you implying ArenaNet is lying? I doubt it, considering there’s no other reason bleed cap should exist.

That’s probably the biggest problem. It’s fine that technical limitations exist. Every video game has to deal with technical limitations. But if a developer is aware of the limitations, the common-sense approach is to design around them, not ignore them and hope players don’t care.

Yeah, it’s a really underrated build. I don’t think it’s overpowered, but it’s a lot more viable than people seem to think it is.

Spectral Grasp is also incredible utility, and only power builds really have the utility skill space to take it and make full use of it.

I’m just restating what ArenaNet said when the question was first posed at launch. I don’t agree with it, either. There’s no reason a catapult shouldn’t be able to burn.

MMO companies seem to always try out these kinds of limitations when a game first launches. In World of Warcraft, mobs were capped at a certain amount of debuffs and fire mobs, which made up 90 percent of the first raid, were actually immune to fire spells. The limitations are normally removed right after the player base complains that build diversity is being killed for no good gameplay-based reason.

The concern here is ArenaNet hasn’t communicated what’s going on with these particular issues.

Anchoku.8142:

LostBalloon.6423:

Zerk builds are even more useless agains Tequatl than condition builds, at least conditions you do something. Tequatl cannot be crit. So precision/crit chance/crit dmg all go down the drain.

The point of the Teq event is to test this, and other ideas, this out. That is why he is “structure.” Low condition damage caps and inability to crit are there for a reason.

You’re giving the technical limitations way too much credit, and your explanation directly contradicts what ArenaNet has said before. Limitations on objects have been around since the game launched, and they were originally based on “immersion” and RP reasons (e.g. a catapult shouldn’t be able to bleed). The bleed cap exists, as stated by ArenaNet, because of bandwidth concerns.

I’m not sure why objects can’t be crit on, but that’s always been the case, whether the “object” is a special one that can have conditions applied to it, such as Tequatl, or a normal object, such as a catapult.

Most condition builds rely on precision for procs.

I’m not really sure how you can say a power build, which more than doubles its non-crit direct damage just by having power, is worse than a build that relies strictly on non-crit direct damage on Tequatl because it can’t reliably maintain even one bleed. The math is really simple: Berserker builds, even without being able to crit, do more than twice the damage on Tequatl than condition builds.

I’ve killed her two times in a row with more than five minutes left. The places she teleports to are scripted, so it’s really easy to catch her and kill her.

I’ve been playing this in top 100 solo queue: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;043Z-FKlHFJ0F4cJkJ0;9;4T;09T59B;40;059BINV0-NV0Ewk2Ewk25Bm

I think it’s a lot better than Khalifa’s build with all the changes. Synergizing Dark Pact and Well of Suffering with Death Shroud and Life Blast is crazy burst.

I used to think it didn’t give good rewards, but I changed my mind. It gives more than one gold, two or three rares, ascended materials, a chance at unique skins and a higher chance at precursors and ascended weapons. For 15 to 20 minutes of work, that’s definitely worth it. It’s just a matter of getting in the right server.

Undo this hurt you caused when you capped my bleeds and made my DPS suck.

Unbreak my heart, ArenaNet.

Derek.9021:

I wish I could somehow tell all the Chinese players on their release day to just play a power build so they don’t ruin the game for themselves. Wish I knew how low on the priority list of fixing this was before I started playing…

Agreed.

You’ll be able to hold nodes with invulnerability after the Oct. 15 patch.

Power necromancer is viable. It just requires a specific team comp.

It’s possible to get high-rated with it in solo queue, too. I’ve remained in the top 100 when playing around with both axe and main-hand dagger.

I think Derek was using the average for his example.

Most good necromancers won’t build to stack 25 bleeds because of bleed cap, anyway.

I think people are generally too scared to experiment outside of the metagame, anyway. I’ve been playing with an axe build on my necromancer recently, and while I’m not sure it’s top-level material, it’s certainly viable. It definitely makes it a lot easier to deal with warriors and AR engineers.

Sagittario.8102:

I agree and it’s not just conditions, but also critical damage. All your precision, crit chance and crit damage are nothing.

This is a problem, but it honestly doesn’t belong in this thread. You do approximately half your damage without crits as a berserker build. Condition builds do like 5-10 percent if you count base damage on weapons that are built for conditions and therefore have really low base damage. It’s just not comparable.

wiazabi.2549:

This is the best part of the event, before you didnt have to care that condition was pretty much useless for events like this but now that it have a timer and a chance to fail the attention to the problem is even bigger.

That applies to all world bosses for me. I know max DPS only really matters on Tequatl, but the timer magnifies just how useless I am on every world boss.

No, it doesn’t. Nothing that says +damage affects condition damage.

That’s not acceptable.

Yeah. The only time I DPS Tequatl is when he’s stunned and I pop Lich Form. Otherwise, I help turrets. But even a power build would be better there because, as Stx pointed out, we can’t do anything against fingers.

The issue isn’t whether condition builds can get around the limitations, but whether those limitations should exist at all. So far, I haven’t heard a justification beyond supposed technical problems.