Condi Meta Needs To Go

I am fine with condition damage and I have classes that are condition damage. The issue is, that there are so many classes with conditions that they can pile on so many all at once, that there is no class that can keep up with the clearing required to prevent that. Before scourge was released, I only stood a chance on basic guardian built to heal and condi clear and I just held points and healed my team mates, the condi meta is now worse than ever before and even the amulets, sigils and runes are weighted towards catering to condition damage and some attempt at condition clear. Honestly, all classes need buffs to their condi clearing, things need to remove more conditions so that there is actually a point to building toward condition clearing.Also, can we stop trying to force metas? Can we actually have balance that doesn't spend time forcing metas? It sucks to take time building something, only to have it be steam rolled because a meta is being forced that makes it superior. The same builds I run in a guild hall are a million times stronger and can actually fight things compared to what is supposed to be Structured PvP. Structured should not build in favor of certain metas that are decided, but should actually promote balanced variation so people can be impressed and amazed by the amount of different builds in the structured environment.

What, you don't like running into PvP and immediately getting a full row of conditions? You don't like burn ticking for 2000+ damage an entire fight? :open_mouth:

...Do you mean to tell me you actually don't like seeing conditions ALWAYS at the top of every death recap!?

You're crazy man, this is the most fun. I believe if you fight a scourge and a firebrand at the same time, you get 3rd degree burns IRL. Friggin' radical.

A. Net is good at balancing PvP and clearly puts a lot of effort into it. They don't just want xpac classes to be broken to sell copies. They'd never do that.

@Jackalrat.5493 said:What, you don't like running into PvP and immediately getting a full row of conditions? You don't like burn ticking for 2000+ damage an entire fight? :open_mouth:

...Do you mean to tell me you actually don't like seeing conditions ALWAYS at the top of every death recap!?

You're crazy man, this is the most fun. I believe if you fight a scourge and a firebrand at the same time, you get 3rd degree burns IRL. Friggin' radical.

A. Net is good at balancing PvP and clearly puts a lot of effort into it. They don't just want xpac classes to be broken to sell copies. They'd never do that.

I want you to know that the third line of your post is an incredible work of art that deserves to be framed and given an award.Also my friend after I read this also said:"Fighting two firebrands and suddenly your house is burning down"

condi should just be a pve thing but i wouldn't hold my breathe if i were you. These guys could care less about pvp and wvw.

It's like I said a long time ago. They need to remove the freestacking change they did to conditions a few years back in pvp and you will see conditions instantly become far more balanced. For those of you who do not know, the only conditions that stacked intensity back then were torment, bleed, and confusion. Confusion also didn't tick damage every second (and shouldn't because that's stupid). Then you follow up that change with making a system where the player with the highest damage on each specific condition is the one whose damage will be counted for that condition if multiple condi users are attacking the same target (I.E a poison thief's poison will tick and a burn guard's burn will tick as each have the higher damage for their respective conditions) This will rid us of condi burst and make it a DoT style like it was intended to be. Then we can drastically reduce the amount of confusion and torment a mes and necro can put out.

@Ario.8964 said:It's like I said a long time ago. They need to remove the freestacking change they did to conditions a few years back in pvp and you will see conditions instantly become far more balanced. For those of you who do not know, the only conditions that stacked intensity back then were torment, bleed, and confusion. Confusion also didn't tick damage every second (and shouldn't because that's stupid). Then you follow up that change with making a system where the player with the highest damage on each specific condition is the one whose damage will be counted for that condition if multiple condi users are attacking the same target (I.E a poison thief's poison will tick and a burn guard's burn will tick as each have the higher damage for their respective conditions) This will rid us of condi burst and make it a DoT style like it was intended to be. Then we can drastically reduce the amount of confusion and torment a mes and necro can put out.

This seems like an interesting idea.Better than mine of just making condition removal better.

While surely some condi builds are overturned but let’s take a look at the meta builds currently:

Elementalist, power or support.Engineer, both holo and scrapper are power builds.Guardian, you can make a case for burn core. Still mostly power or support builds.Ranger, power or support. Condi builds are usable but weak.reverant, condi build is not bad, but hardly op or even meta.Thief, power.Warrior, power.

That is seven out of nine classes where the meta build is not condi. I would argue that majority of condi builds need a buff to be sPvP viable, forget meta.

Ya scourges and mirages are over tuned. Scourges specifically are a problem, and it is beyond stupid that Anet did not address the ridiculous boon corruption capability.

As for fighting condi, only reverant really struggles. Excluding scourges and mirages, all classes have sufficient tools to deal with condi builds. Sadly, how broken scourges are is ruining sPvP, but you cannot blankly blame it on all condi damage.

@otto.5684 said:While surely some condi builds are overturned but let’s take a look at the meta builds currently:

Elementalist, power or support.Engineer, both holo and scrapper are power builds.Guardian, you can make a case for burn core. Still mostly power or support builds.Ranger, power or support. Condi builds are usable but weak.reverant, condi build is not bad, but hardly op or even meta.Thief, power.Warrior, power.

That is seven out of nine classes where the meta build is not condi. I would argue that majority of condi builds need a buff to be sPvP viable, forget meta.

Ya scourges and mirages are over tuned. Scourges specifically are a problem, and it is beyond stupid that Anet did not address the ridiculous boon corruption capability.

As for fighting condi, only reverant really struggles. Excluding scourges and mirages, all classes have sufficient tools to deal with condi builds. Sadly, how broken scourges are is ruining sPvP, but you cannot blankly blame it on all condi damage.

I've seen a fair number of condi thieves, but you're right in that it's only a couple of condi builds that cause the problem. In all honesty, it's boon corrupt that's the real issue, in my opinion. You often can't avoid getting certain boons, and when they're corrupted, you get the condi burst with free cover conditions. I can cleanse scourge's burst, but not that plus like five other random conditions.

@Unholy Pillager.3791 said:

@otto.5684 said:While surely some condi builds are overturned but let’s take a look at the meta builds currently:

Elementalist, power or support.Engineer, both holo and scrapper are power builds.Guardian, you can make a case for burn core. Still mostly power or support builds.Ranger, power or support. Condi builds are usable but weak.reverant, condi build is not bad, but hardly op or even meta.Thief, power.Warrior, power.

That is seven out of nine classes where the meta build is not condi. I would argue that majority of condi builds need a buff to be sPvP viable, forget meta.

Ya scourges and mirages are over tuned. Scourges specifically are a problem, and it is beyond stupid that Anet did not address the ridiculous boon corruption capability.

As for fighting condi, only reverant really struggles. Excluding scourges and mirages, all classes have sufficient tools to deal with condi builds. Sadly, how broken scourges are is ruining sPvP, but you cannot blankly blame it on all condi damage.

Boon corrupt is a major balance breaking issue now. It is not only the additional damage, but many classes their functionality is woven with specific boons. Tempest, Rev and to some extent guarding rely on boons to even function. There is a reason why Rev and elementalist are pushed out of the meta.

Not to mention how stupid it is to apply stability then half second later it is corrupted and you are CCed again.

In my opinion reaper boon corruption was outreaching. Now it is a shit show.

The real issue is that power being instant damage it will always be better than damage over time in theory. There are several ways to address this, but unfortunately Anet has taken the unwise move of making condi viable by making almost every single condi skill mindlessly spammable. Most condi abilities are gigantic pulsing AoE abilities and as a result condi builds can generally be played by a trained monkey. This is why everyone hates condi: Anet balanced it by making it extremely frustrating and unfun to play against, and extremely unchallenging and unrewarding to play as.

Take a look at Herald vs Scourge. Arguably the highest skill floor build in the game is hard countered by the lowest skill floor build in the game. That's backwards from what almost every other competitive PvP game does, and for a very good reason: It's bad game design.

@otto.5684 said:While surely some condi builds are overturned but let’s take a look at the meta builds currently:

Elementalist, power or support.Engineer, both holo and scrapper are power builds.Guardian, you can make a case for burn core. Still mostly power or support builds.Ranger, power or support. Condi builds are usable but weak.reverant, condi build is not bad, but hardly op or even meta.Thief, power.Warrior, power.

That is seven out of nine classes where the meta build is not condi. I would argue that majority of condi builds need a buff to be sPvP viable, forget meta.

Ya scourges and mirages are over tuned. Scourges specifically are a problem, and it is beyond stupid that Anet did not address the ridiculous boon corruption capability.

As for fighting condi, only reverant really struggles. Excluding scourges and mirages, all classes have sufficient tools to deal with condi builds. Sadly, how broken scourges are is ruining sPvP, but you cannot blankly blame it on all condi damage.

The issue is fundamentally the way condi currently works is bad design. It's supposed to be a DoT form of damage but it's designed in a way that allows burst which is why at least one condition build has been op in every meta since the change originally happened. The builds that do it are the ones where you don't have to sacrifice your sustain tools/traits in order to apply the heavy amount of condi needed to do that level of damage. The reason most classes don't have meta condi builds is because at the moment they'd have to sacrifice too many tools/traits they need for survival/basic build function in order to achieve those high numbers. What needs to happen is instead of nerfing every build ever that ends up being able to use condi effectively and forcing a power only game, the DoT style needs to be brought back to conditions by removing freestacking and reducing damage then decreasing cleanse and buffing sustain of condition based builds to bring a new style of play rather than "drop all you condis and run to another fight because you know they're dead anyways". With that you buff the condition builds that aren't working (as you said needed to happen and I agree needs to happen cause diversity is good) and keep the ones that are too strong in check.

The problem with it in WVW which most people know is their ability to put on mainly defensive armor with very little downside to damage.

The problem is they tried to fix strong things with new options.1-2 Boon heavy builds shine? Do boon corrupt. 1-2 condi builds get over the top? Add resistance.And each addition makes it more complicated and gets a problem on it´s own .... Boon corrupt and resistace got out of control but its only a few classes. Balance these classes and don´t try to power creep and add new counters. It becomes an endless spiral.

@Unholy Pillager.3791 said:

@otto.5684 said:While surely some condi builds are overturned but let’s take a look at the meta builds currently:

Elementalist, power or support.Engineer, both holo and scrapper are power builds.Guardian, you can make a case for burn core. Still mostly power or support builds.Ranger, power or support. Condi builds are usable but weak.reverant, condi build is not bad, but hardly op or even meta.Thief, power.Warrior, power.

That is seven out of nine classes where the meta build is not condi. I would argue that majority of condi builds need a buff to be sPvP viable, forget meta.

Ya scourges and mirages are over tuned. Scourges specifically are a problem, and it is beyond stupid that Anet did not address the ridiculous boon corruption capability.

As for fighting condi, only reverant really struggles. Excluding scourges and mirages, all classes have sufficient tools to deal with condi builds. Sadly, how broken scourges are is ruining sPvP, but you cannot blankly blame it on all condi damage.

I'd say this is one of the larger issues.

I had a pretty decent condi and healing guardian and in most situations I was fine. It wasn't perfect but it was enough that I could participate in PvP and that isn't an easy feat when you live in Australia and you are on the US servers, so my base ping is nearly 300ms, so obviously I suffer from input lag and often make minor mistakes on dodge timing comparatively to a lot of the people I play with and so having a build that was friendly enough to me that I could support my team and survive on the point until my team could return was hugely what I built around. She was a base guardian and she was great at fulfilling my needs, but this season has suddenly decimated her.

Basically I will give you a situation, I run to mid with my team and we encounter the enemy and the burst of conditions appear and boy do they hurt. I use my ability to take the conditions from my team around me so they are cleared of their conditions and then I mass clear mine off but with all the boons I have and they get corrupted, I attempt to clear them off with the condition clearing skills I have left but I still get my ass handed to me because the conditions just keep coming. I tried adjusting my build and dropping the condition pulling from allies skill and even tried changing to firebrand for the tomes and honestly, I feel like I got worse.

Now I am suffering from the issue that I can't find a character to work with anymore, it feels like I am going to have to drop out on participating in the ranked season which I look forward to getting pips for, all because out of all my 18 characters I can't find a build that works for me.

@hellsqueen.3045 said:I am fine with condition damage and I have classes that are condition damage. The issue is, that there are so many classes with conditions that they can pile on so many all at once, that there is no class that can keep up with the clearing required to prevent that. Before scourge was released, I only stood a chance on basic guardian built to heal and condi clear and I just held points and healed my team mates, the condi meta is now worse than ever before and even the amulets, sigils and runes are weighted towards catering to condition damage and some attempt at condition clear. Honestly, all classes need buffs to their condi clearing, things need to remove more conditions so that there is actually a point to building toward condition clearing.Also, can we stop trying to force metas? Can we actually have balance that doesn't spend time forcing metas? It sucks to take time building something, only to have it be steam rolled because a meta is being forced that makes it superior. The same builds I run in a guild hall are a million times stronger and can actually fight things compared to what is supposed to be Structured PvP. Structured should not build in favor of certain metas that are decided, but should actually promote balanced variation so people can be impressed and amazed by the amount of different builds in the structured environment.

I completely agree with you hellsqueen :+1:

@Ario.8964 said:It's like I said a long time ago. They need to remove the freestacking change they did to conditions a few years back in pvp and you will see conditions instantly become far more balanced. For those of you who do not know, the only conditions that stacked intensity back then were torment, bleed, and confusion. Confusion also didn't tick damage every second (and shouldn't because that's stupid). Then you follow up that change with making a system where the player with the highest damage on each specific condition is the one whose damage will be counted for that condition if multiple condi users are attacking the same target (I.E a poison thief's poison will tick and a burn guard's burn will tick as each have the higher damage for their respective conditions) This will rid us of condi burst and make it a DoT style like it was intended to be. Then we can drastically reduce the amount of confusion and torment a mes and necro can put out.

Yes, back then it was like this. But the pve babies complained that condis were worthless in dungeons and open world bosses, so they changed it.

@Razor.6392 said:

@Ario.8964 said:It's like I said a long time ago. They need to remove the freestacking change they did to conditions a few years back in pvp and you will see conditions instantly become far more balanced. For those of you who do not know, the only conditions that stacked intensity back then were torment, bleed, and confusion. Confusion also didn't tick damage every second (and shouldn't because that's stupid). Then you follow up that change with making a system where the player with the highest damage on each specific condition is the one whose damage will be counted for that condition if multiple condi users are attacking the same target (I.E a poison thief's poison will tick and a burn guard's burn will tick as each have the higher damage for their respective conditions) This will rid us of condi burst and make it a DoT style like it was intended to be. Then we can drastically reduce the amount of confusion and torment a mes and necro can put out.

Foooo, its still easy to fix. Split condi damage per tick and duration in PvE and PvP, make them last longer in PvP, but deal less dmg per tick and Wooo-hooo!

@Ario.8964 said:

@otto.5684 said:While surely some condi builds are overturned but let’s take a look at the meta builds currently:

Elementalist, power or support.Engineer, both holo and scrapper are power builds.Guardian, you can make a case for burn core. Still mostly power or support builds.Ranger, power or support. Condi builds are usable but weak.reverant, condi build is not bad, but hardly op or even meta.Thief, power.Warrior, power.

That is seven out of nine classes where the meta build is not condi. I would argue that majority of condi builds need a buff to be sPvP viable, forget meta.

Ya scourges and mirages are over tuned. Scourges specifically are a problem, and it is beyond stupid that Anet did not address the ridiculous boon corruption capability.

As for fighting condi, only reverant really struggles. Excluding scourges and mirages, all classes have sufficient tools to deal with condi builds. Sadly, how broken scourges are is ruining sPvP, but you cannot blankly blame it on all condi damage.

I do not agree with this whole dot burst thing. The highest condi burst are guardian and rev. Neither condi build is strong in sPvP.

The reason necro is out performing is boon corrupt and Mesmer is the evade + difficulty to target. Let’s not generalize with all “condi” builds and “burst.” It just is not true.

@otto.5684 said:

@Ario.8964 said:

@otto.5684 said:While surely some condi builds are overturned but let’s take a look at the meta builds currently:

Elementalist, power or support.Engineer, both holo and scrapper are power builds.Guardian, you can make a case for burn core. Still mostly power or support builds.Ranger, power or support. Condi builds are usable but weak.reverant, condi build is not bad, but hardly op or even meta.Thief, power.Warrior, power.

That is seven out of nine classes where the meta build is not condi. I would argue that majority of condi builds need a buff to be sPvP viable, forget meta.

Ya scourges and mirages are over tuned. Scourges specifically are a problem, and it is beyond stupid that Anet did not address the ridiculous boon corruption capability.

As for fighting condi, only reverant really struggles. Excluding scourges and mirages, all classes have sufficient tools to deal with condi builds. Sadly, how broken scourges are is ruining sPvP, but you cannot blankly blame it on all condi damage.

Their builds aren't good in pvp 1) Because other builds on the profession outclass them 2) They have to sacrifice utility and survivability to get that high of damage. Also, if those builds aren't used/good in pvp why even consider bringing them up? If a change is only going to affect pvp why bring up anything not pvp related?

You don't think instant 25 stacks of confusion and torment is a burst? You don't think 7 stacks of burn plus 15 torment plus 8 bleed plus poison is a burst?Get hit by that damage and see how much of your health goes away. I'd call it a burst

@Unholy Pillager.3791 said:

@otto.5684 said:While surely some condi builds are overturned but let’s take a look at the meta builds currently:

Elementalist, power or support.Engineer, both holo and scrapper are power builds.Guardian, you can make a case for burn core. Still mostly power or support builds.Ranger, power or support. Condi builds are usable but weak.reverant, condi build is not bad, but hardly op or even meta.Thief, power.Warrior, power.

That is seven out of nine classes where the meta build is not condi. I would argue that majority of condi builds need a buff to be sPvP viable, forget meta.

Ya scourges and mirages are over tuned. Scourges specifically are a problem, and it is beyond stupid that Anet did not address the ridiculous boon corruption capability.

As for fighting condi, only reverant really struggles. Excluding scourges and mirages, all classes have sufficient tools to deal with condi builds. Sadly, how broken scourges are is ruining sPvP, but you cannot blankly blame it on all condi damage.

Condi mirage can solo every one of those classes at far and win or stalemate enough to make a difference every time. It's the best far carry class now that druid was nerfed.

Scourge is also one of the most deadly specs to have in a given team fight , the area denial , the cleave, the condi aoe is unparalleled to any power build you would bring into a team fight, so much so that firebrands camp on top of scourges now to ensure they can do as much damage as possible in a given team fight.

Yes, while the majority of the classes run power or support, those 2 classes alone carry the shit out of fights both group and solo.

They might trying to call pve players to fill the holes on pvp, so expect more easy gimmicks towards offensiveness, and more easy ways to get rewards.And i doubt condi meta will go, since condis were worked to kill pve healt sponges, if u limit that on pvp "the pve...players" will have issues with their condi game style as well, reason they add resistance imba boon as a counter to the spam, its a way to avoid balancing, since cant differ from pve that much.

Gw2 pvp is designed to catter possible pve players, they need gimmick mostly and the easyer the access to damage is the better.

@Ario.8964 said:

@otto.5684 said:

@Ario.8964 said:

@otto.5684 said:While surely some condi builds are overturned but let’s take a look at the meta builds currently:

Elementalist, power or support.Engineer, both holo and scrapper are power builds.Guardian, you can make a case for burn core. Still mostly power or support builds.Ranger, power or support. Condi builds are usable but weak.reverant, condi build is not bad, but hardly op or even meta.Thief, power.Warrior, power.

That is seven out of nine classes where the meta build is not condi. I would argue that majority of condi builds need a buff to be sPvP viable, forget meta.

Ya scourges and mirages are over tuned. Scourges specifically are a problem, and it is beyond stupid that Anet did not address the ridiculous boon corruption capability.

As for fighting condi, only reverant really struggles. Excluding scourges and mirages, all classes have sufficient tools to deal with condi builds. Sadly, how broken scourges are is ruining sPvP, but you cannot blankly blame it on all condi damage.

I have never seen 25 stacks of confusion and 15 torment done by a mirage over any duration. Though I did specifically mention necro and Mesmer being an issue.

The point is we cannot generalize that all condi builds are a problem and try to recreate the wheel addressing condi damage when scourge and mirage are the only outliers.

I've been playing WoW a lot lately and returned for the new season. Man, I have to say that GW2 has the pvp problems that WoW had a decade ago. Condi stacking is simply a bad joke while matchmaking is, well, better than season 1. Play a power build and you will have a bad day. Trying to figure out how to counter a class feels more to be an attempt to counter bad class design.

@Razor.6392 said:Yes, back then it was like this. But the pve babies complained that condis were worthless in dungeons and open world bosses, so they changed it.Those "babies" were completely right, though. Pre-specialization patch, conditions were garbage in PVE (even if multiple condition users didn't interfere with each others' damage, which they did in fact do) and power builds ruled supreme.

@Hyper Cutter.9376 said:

@Razor.6392 said:Yes, back then it was like this. But the pve babies complained that condis were worthless in dungeons and open world bosses, so they changed it.Those "babies" were completely right, though. Pre-specialization patch, conditions were garbage in PVE (even if multiple condition users didn't interfere with each others' damage, which they did in fact do) and power builds ruled supreme.

I don't think anyone would disagree with that. The complaint is generally aimed at the idea that conditions should be a viable primary source of damage - i.e. why make an inherently hard-counter based mechanic with much lower stat requirements comparable to power?