Moving Forward Re: Condi

I think most people, for the most part, agree that the 12/12 patch was a good thing to decreasing the amount of spike damage condi does. Was the patch perfect? No. Did it inadvertantly hurt some professions? Yes More work needs to be done regarding general balance. But I'd like to share a few of my ideas, some original, some not, some hybrids, as a place to give the balance team ideas, some of which has been suggested ad nausium, as this is one of the places that they go for research. Normally, I'd post in other forums, but apparently, that's not effective, as I'm primaraly a WvW player. Just didn't know that. So, here goes:

Assuming that professions like Scourge and Spellbreaker are not significantly changed regarding their boon strip/corrupt, something needs to be done about condition damage. In PvE, this isn't an issue. In PvP, it's getting to be in a balanced place. This is due to a limitation on the amount of players, 5, and usually, one isn't fighting all 5 at once. People are generally spread around the map. It's still a problem though. However, in WvW, this is a major issue as a group can get up to 80 people, more on EBG. That's rare, but it's to illustrate the point that boon corruption/strip becomes extremely overpowered when there are lots of these professions hitting the enemy with 0 counter. If there's 10, or 20, or 30 scourges bombing an area with a spellbreaker thrown in, it's instant death. This is a fact. Lets avoid discussions like, be patient, bait, don't be stupid, etc. This didn't exist as badly before. It is solely due to this mechanic. Yes, coordinated groups before did do good condi-bombs, but it was more difficult.

One solution that would help PvP and WvW: Make resistance a special buff, not a boon. With all this boon corruption/strip, resistance does nothing. It's gone. This is compounded with sigil of absorption, which steals resistance first. As a buff, it would be uncorruptable, bringing resistance back in line to pre-pof levels. There are other potentials here to balance it around condis. For example, it couldn't stack more than x (lets say 4) seconds. So, one couldn't load up on it. It isn't shared via mesmer.

Another idea: Make it so that when one cleanses, one gets the above mentioned resistance buff, but for a shorter duration, lets say 2 seconds. This would provide a reasonable amount of time to counter, instead of running around like a burning chicken with 7 condis killing you. This would also prevent people from seeing the necessity of loading a ton of condi cleanse, knowing that they're not gonna have to just spam cleanse the whole time. It would provide a bit of breathing room to either trait slightly differently or put a non-condi cleanse utility skill on. Basically, opening things up a bit for build diversity.

Another idea: separate damaging conditions from non-damaging conditions. Damaging conditions should take priority. This could be taken even further by having a cleanse prioritize whatever is damaging you the most. But as it is, it's a crap shoot when you get loaded up with 15 conditions (yes there are 15 conditions) (Rare, but possible. In WvW, more like 9) as to what will be cleansed, and even if you're out, you still might have the 20 stacks of bleeding on you, or whatever. At least if this was separated into two categories, one would go from a 7% chance to 20% chance (1/5 damaging condis) of cleansing what's killing you. Afterwards, if there are not damaging conditions, it would go to CC condis. I know it's last in, first cleansed, but this is often detrimental to cleansing what's killing you where the damaging condition is hidden behind CC condis.

I honestly think a combination of the above 3 ideas should be implemented. Condition builds are able to pump out a lot of power damage now, with a few sets that provide a strong balance of the two. But something fundamental needs to be done, especially for the health of WvW and PvP. This would require a lot of work, but it's work that needs to happen. Whatever is done would dramatically shift the effectiveness of condi damage, especially regarding cleanses, so more work would need to go into each profession/weapon/trait with a fine tooth comb and be sure that a profession doesn't have too much cleansing to make it overpowered. It's a shame more thought didn't go into PoF, because it's obvious some professions were designed to deal more with conditions, like Firebrand. This means it's cleansing effectiveness would need to be toned down. The way I see it, the professions are just getting more and more polarized to the extremes and they need to be brought more in line to a middle ground. If the fundamentals of the professions aren't massively re-worked, then a fundamental change needs to happen with condition damage.

It's been over a week and received no replies to this topic. This is why we don't post here. If this was in the WvW and PvP forums, it'd get a lot of discussion. If there are any devs reading this, this is why it's important to peruse all the forums about class discussions. If you already do, then great. Just not a lot of activity here.

The problem isnt condition removal, for the most part its in a solid state. I think Rev could do with a proper access to Resistance, maybe designed aorund the buff rather than boon idea, would need trait and skill changes to keep it balanced but as they lack in condition removal in general, having good resistance up time would be okay. As long as its not too much.

The bigger issue when it comes with Condition application Vs Removal and the broken design of Torment and Confusion and the sheer never ending application one class has access to it. You get punished for moving. You get punished for not moving. You get punishing for using an ability. You get punished for doing nothing. Torment and Confusion need to be redesigned when it comes to PvP/WvW. I do agree that Condi removal should focus on the damaging conditions first Having 3 conditions on you, 1 that is killing you and the condition that gets removed is a pointless cover condition gets so annoying :/

Boon corrupts though. Its not SO bad when solo but as you point out, in zergs and blobs its uncontrollable. Having huge areas filled with Boon hate is just bad. Bad. Bad game design. One thing rhey could maybe do, when a condition gets removed/Corrupted that person gets a "buff" that lasts 1second that stops any boons from being removed or corrupted while its up. This buff would ONLY happen when you have a Boon removed/Corrupted no skills or abilities would provide it.