Please make power builds more viable!

I dont understand what's the problem to give power based builds some love!Condition damage is absurdly stronger than power. Does anyone know a way they could balance things on PVE at least. The game seems boring because of that imbalance.

A.) Resistance should be removed/ rolled into Protection (possibly with a lower value, 25% or so)

B.) Raw Power damage should be raised across the board. Nothing crazy, like 5% to start, then more if needed.

C.) Toughness (or another present—not addded—stat) should affect condition damage, obviously. Right now you negate it completely or you eat the stacks. That doesn’t promote balance when every encounter, especially in PVP can yo-yo like that.

I think those changes would make an impact.

People wanted condition to be stronger so necro could be in meta.Anet buffed condition to make necro happy.

They need to make more bosses that can shed condis and get resistance.Because on paper things are working as intended. Power spikes quite rapidly and delivers a ton of damage in a short amount of time, but quickly drops off.While condis takes some time to build the stacks, but after it gets going it does a ton of damage. Problem is that condis reach that optimal damage quite fast and most fights that matter last way longer than that, which makes power less viable.In bosses that phase in and out of combat and reset between phases, you can see clearly that Power builds are more dominant, also the same for shorter fights vs adds and champs that die quicker.In longer fights condi builds become unreachable.

All this says that in PvE everything on the damage part is working as intended. The problem is that there's very few encounters and bosses where condi doesn't work better vs power, because all of them take longer to kill or phase out than it takes for condi classes to go cruise speed.

In PvP and WvW they simply need to get back to the 25 stack cap. And lower the durations across the board, then tune it from there.

Power builds are outclassed in every relevant PvE content, especially 1vs1 builds. There's a reason why you'll never see certain classes / builds during raids. And no, implementing a specific set of bosses tailored to them won't solve the larger issue here (neither do miniscule buffs like +5% damage). The problem at its core is the whole notion of: power = burst damage when in reallity it should have been more like: cerain weapon skills / class traits = burst damage. But even ignoring that, there are still various game mechanics condi builds don't have to deal with, giving them an unfair advantage over their power based counterparts for seemingly no reason (for example the fight vs. the manifestation of self doubt).

@Haishao.6851 said:People wanted condition to be stronger so necro could be in meta.Anet buffed condition to make necro happy.

And then still screwed over Necro in the end during that process.

@ReaverKane.7598 said:They need to make more bosses that can shed condis and get resistance.Because on paper things are working as intended. Power spikes quite rapidly and delivers a ton of damage in a short amount of time, but quickly drops off.While condis takes some time to build the stacks, but after it gets going it does a ton of damage. Problem is that condis reach that optimal damage quite fast and most fights that matter last way longer than that, which makes power less viable.In bosses that phase in and out of combat and reset between phases, you can see clearly that Power builds are more dominant, also the same for shorter fights vs adds and champs that die quicker.In longer fights condi builds become unreachable.

All this says that in PvE everything on the damage part is working as intended. The problem is that there's very few encounters and bosses where condi doesn't work better vs power, because all of them take longer to kill or phase out than it takes for condi classes to go cruise speed.

In PvP and WvW they simply need to get back to the 25 stack cap. And lower the durations across the board, then tune it from there.

No. The problem is they're using a bad balancing paradigm for power and condition damage, and the result is that condition damage has been overtuned for years, which is wrecking the game in numerous ways. This is exactly why PvP went to crap right around the time HoT came out, because that update and their ongoing balance iteration (lol) is rooted in bad ideas about what role condition damage has in the game.

The single biggest problem is that they're fixated on the idea (and have convinced the player base) that condition damage should outperform power damage in terms of sustained DPS because it's DoT, but that doesn't work. Unlike DoT effects in most other MMOs, conditions were designed around short durations and armor piercing, and this is because conditions need to be balanced in both short and long duration fights. The primary determinant for whether power should beat condi or vice versa should be target armor rating, not time. I would probably consider a good break-even point to be around 2400-2600 armor (this is close to what the target golem has). So, in other words, if power and condition damage were properly balanced, we would expect them to have equivalent DPS against the target golem. Power would beat condi against targets with less armor, and condi would beat power against targets with more armor. Currently, condition builds average around 20% higher against the target golem, meaning they are over-tuned by about 20%.

The problem is that, instead of reigning in condition damage two years ago, they just added a bunch of new sources for condi cleanse and immunity. The result of all of this is multi-fold and precisely what we see in the game's current mess of gameplay:

-condi damage dominates the meta, and power needs specialized gimmicks to be competitive-too much power creep with no changes to passive defense-survival is too reliant on building a lot of anti-condi in your kit, which hurts build customization-defensive stats (especially Toughness) are underpowered due to a.) too much damage in general, and b.) too much damage specifically coming from conditions-non bunker builds are too fragile, while bunker builds have too much survivability-removal of toughness amulets in PvP because of the bunker problem, when the real problem is condi clear/immunity (condi is supposed to specialize against armor)

I will post their comment from the interview.

@ Source Power is intended to be more spike damage-centric, wheras Condi is meant to be more ramping, sustained damage. Currently there are some issues with how quickly condition damage can be spiked up, negating the benefits of power damage.If I presented you with a power skill that dealt 1,000 damage instantaneously and a condition one that dealt 1,000 damage over 4 seconds there wouldn't be a question about what build to choose; you'd go with the instant option every time. Not counting other effects, condition skills must inflict more damage over their duration in order to make power vs. condi into a real choice.Moving forward we'll be aiming changes to bring a bit more parity between the options through the ramp time and using that to emphasize some of the differences. That said, a fundamental issue is that foes whose health pools allow them to survive a significant amount of time (beyond the point of condition stack ramping) are going to favor condition builds unless they specifically have mechanics which deal with conditions.

As long as they don't count these mentioned other effects like armor, protection, weakness, 3 stat vs 1(2) requirement and other stuff I doubt we can have those balanced. If they have a damage type with lots of ways to mitigate and a damage type with one way to mitigate (cleanses) where the later one is non existent in pve the choice is obvious the one without mitigation.There are also in open world too few enemies that remove conditions or apply resistance yet awakened buff themself with protection and apply weakness.A first step could also be to change condition/boon duration on runes in expertise/concentration. There are no power runes with +45% damage.

The condi/power thing is really overblown in PVE. In terms of raids, VG/Sloth-ish/Trio/Escort/KC/Xera are all power favoured really, and it's not like they're bad on the other encounters. In fractals, power in general is usually flat out better for obvious burst and trash pack reasons than condi.

In a golem scenario in PVE, yes condi wins out. But in reality that doesn't matter much.

sPVP and WvW is a whole different issue of boon corruption and other garbage that goes way deeper than "condi beats power"

I think the biggest problem is condition duration. That thing should be toned down or have a lower cap. Also, crit damage should start at 200% like in other MMOs (with cap if needed), that would help Power builds.

@Crystal Black.8190 said:I will post their comment from the interview.

@

Source

Power is intended to be more spike damage-centric, wheras Condi is meant to be more ramping, sustained damage. Currently there are some issues with how quickly condition damage can be spiked up, negating the benefits of power damage.If I presented you with a power skill that dealt 1,000 damage instantaneously and a condition one that dealt 1,000 damage over 4 seconds there wouldn't be a question about what build to choose; you'd go with the instant option every time. Not counting other effects, condition skills must inflict more damage over their duration in order to make power vs. condi into a real choice.Moving forward we'll be aiming changes to bring a bit more parity between the options through the ramp time and using that to emphasize some of the differences. That said, a fundamental issue is that foes whose health pools allow them to survive a significant amount of time (beyond the point of condition stack ramping) are going to favor condition builds unless they specifically have mechanics which deal with conditions.

Yeah, the problem with Karl's example is that he excludes the dynamic effect of passive armor, which is the most important factor to consider here. The power skill's damage would be dynamically adjusted based on the target's armor, while the condition skill's damage would not - it would always deal 1000 damage as long as the target survives 4 seconds.

So, the former wouldn't automatically be the better choice, it would depend on what you were fighting, and, in fact, it's likely the latter would be the better choice in more situations than not, since 4 seconds isn't very long and you have the versatility of bypassing armor. The choice is supposed to be whether you want to be able to wreck glass targets or reliably wear down high armor targets. Balancing them primarily around how long the fights lasts makes zero sense. He always comes across like he doesn't know what he's talking about pretty much every time he posts anything, and this is why we can't have balance.

@Tails.9372 said:Power builds are outclassed in every relevant PvE content, especially 1vs1 builds. There's a reason why you'll never see certain classes / builds during raids. And no, implementing a specific set of bosses tailored to them won't solve the larger issue here (neither do miniscule buffs like +5% damage). The problem at its core is the whole notion of: power = burst damage when in reallity it should have been more like: cerain weapon skills / class traits = burst damage. But even ignoring that, there are still various game mechanics condi builds don't have to deal with, giving them an unfair advantage over their power based counterparts for seemingly no reason (for example the fight vs. the manifestation of self doubt).

Every single fractal speed run, CM or not, regards power builds (power weaver specially) as the BiS DPS there can be right now, nothing comes close to competing. You can check this web for more insight and videos:

• http://discretize.eu/

As an addition to this, whether you think dungeons are dead or not, every single dungeon is done quicker/better with power builds.

For raids you can actually check global stats in gw2raidar:

• https://www.gw2raidar.com/global_stats

The absolute top DPS (99 percentile) registered is on power weaver. There are two over 30k DPS power builds while there are 5 over 30k DPS condition builds (99 percentile, excluding scourge).

In PvP, checking metabattle:

• https://metabattle.com/wiki/Conquest

There are two meta power builds, two meta condi builds, one meta support build. There are more power builds labeled as "Great" than condi builds overall.

So yeah, you're pretty far from the truth.

Keep in mind that plenty of non-condi builds are viable. Viable and optimal are not the same and player imposed restrictions doesn’t change that. If a player wishes to play a non optimal build then they can creat their own group and advertise it as such so other like minded players can join them.

(talking about all condi applications on all classes, ends up as the same damage with much longer ramp up time)

I don’t think condi is better per se. I think it depends on the traits also included by class. Thief just dps is still better than most classes that do regular dps. The only class I think that is stronger in dps than thief is ele.

I think ArenaNet just needs to nerf up classes in dps. Cause warrior is trash by himself just doing dps, or condi. It’s just ugly when I can roam pof maps and do hps with my ranger, engi, and thief by myself but struggle with my warrior who’s designed to kill.

Everything is fine the way it is just some classes need to be nerfed up. And I hate that they killed thiefs stealth. Thief stealth is garbage now. How can you be in stealth but still be shot directly at while in stealth. ArenaNet needs to fix that.

@Haishao.6851 said:People wanted condition to be stronger so necro could be in meta.Anet buffed condition to make necro happy.

Really because last I seen Necro got nerfed, and is not part of any Meta, so where are all these buffs you speak of, and which meta is it part of.

In reality power is widely used still and people just choose to ignore it. The only place where condi behaves horribly is WvW and that's because you have a Zerg pumping out those and no amount of cleanse will save you. It's like dungeons being dead despite being as rewarding/even more rewarding than what they used to be.

Power builds were the meta for a long time and conditions had 25 stack limit back then. Now they fixed the issues with condition damage,but now, it's OP compared to power builds. They have to balance the DPS output between them somehow. Raid and dungeon groups only care about DPS benchmarks and metas nowadays, so they have to allow all offensive build types to output similar DPS. It will allow build diversity for sure.

@Haishao.6851 said:People wanted condition to be stronger so necro could be in meta.Anet buffed condition to make necro happy.

Necro happy. That was great.

@Evolute.6239 said:The condi/power thing is really overblown in PVE. In terms of raids, VG/Sloth-ish/Trio/Escort/KC/Xera are all power favoured really, and it's not like they're bad on the other encounters. In fractals, power in general is usually flat out better for obvious burst and trash pack reasons than condi.

In a golem scenario in PVE, yes condi wins out. But in reality that doesn't matter much.

sPVP and WvW is a whole different issue of boon corruption and other garbage that goes way deeper than "condi beats power"

In PvE things are not so bad. Power guardian, elemantilist, thief and somewhat Rev and eng are strong. Ranger, mesmer, warrior and necro do not have end game PvE viable power builds. Yet Anet here takes the itsy betsy tiny mini balance approach here. How many times will warrior axe get buffed to be end game viable? It seems it needs 10 more patches. Same for Necro Reaper and GS. Herald power builds are still at the margin of viability, after 2 buff patches. Slooooooooow approach.

sPvP is a completely different beast. It seems we rotate what is out performing for condi damage. Chronologically, it was guardian, Rev, then Reaper, berzeker, chrono pre-hot through HoT cycle. The problem HoT created in power creep of resistance and too much condi removal, to counter the level condi application some of theses can put. Take Reaper, while had some OP periods, it held steady for most of the second half of HoT, yet kept getting power creeped by resistance and condi removal. By PoF release it was completely pushed out of viability.

Also PoF royally fucked every thing with boon/removal corruption. You can easily get hit by 4-5 damaging condis with stacks, while losing all boons. Then get instantly CCed after casting stability, which got removed/corrupted 0.25 sec after application. And stacking 25 might now seems to be somehting that couple of classes can do as well. It is just a fucking shit show now.

Did I mention the over abundance of AOE CC? Cuz that is supposed to be a thing..

@Lunateric.3708 said:In reality power is widely used still and people just choose to ignore it. The only place where condi behaves horribly is WvW and that's because you have a Zerg pumping out those and no amount of cleanse will save you. It's like dungeons being dead despite being as rewarding/even more rewarding than what they used to be.

One class breaking content by exploiting a hit box glitch =/= "power is just as good guys".

Won't happen. Anet is to madly in love with condition damage. Power builds were jilted at the alter.

@Substance E.4852 said:

@Lunateric.3708 said:In reality power is widely used still and people just choose to ignore it. The only place where condi behaves horribly is WvW and that's because you have a Zerg pumping out those and no amount of cleanse will save you. It's like dungeons being dead despite being as rewarding/even more rewarding than what they used to be.

You can read a post above I made with actual raid global stats and conquest meta builds, the condi "dominance" is mostly poor player perception.

@Lunateric.3708 said:

@Substance E.4852 said:

@Lunateric.3708 said:In reality power is widely used still and people just choose to ignore it. The only place where condi behaves horribly is WvW and that's because you have a Zerg pumping out those and no amount of cleanse will save you. It's like dungeons being dead despite being as rewarding/even more rewarding than what they used to be.

"Poor player perception" is just a fancy way of saying people default to what gets the job done with the least effort.

When raids were first released engineer was technically more dps than cranger but required substantially more effort to keep it at that dps. Not hard to see why cranger became so popular despite being not absolute top tier.

Also this, "Disclaimer: The statistics displayed in this report are based off data available within GW2Raidar only, as such it is not a complete representation of the Guild Wars 2 raiding community. "

@Substance E.4852 said:

@Lunateric.3708 said:

@Substance E.4852 said:

@Lunateric.3708 said:In reality power is widely used still and people just choose to ignore it. The only place where condi behaves horribly is WvW and that's because you have a Zerg pumping out those and no amount of cleanse will save you. It's like dungeons being dead despite being as rewarding/even more rewarding than what they used to be.

If you have a better log central that gathers thousands of raid kills I welcome you to post it up, otherwise I'm pretty sure that's the most accurate source of info we can get.

• Fractals and dungeons are dominated by power, hands down.

• Conquest has an even distribution give or take.

• VG, Sloth, KC, Gors, Sam dominated by power.

The only real outlier I see is WvW. Rest is pretty much poor player perception as in people can't be bothered to think outside the box. I say this as a power Holo player btw.