Condi Balance Paradigm

I posted this on the PvP forum the other day, but it's really a general issue and not specifically tied to PvP:

I genuinely don't understand the philosophy behind the approach to balancing condi. In a macro sense, the way to balance it is obvious to me, but the dev team is in a totally different place with it, and the last balance patch basically did the opposite of what I would do - which is to leave durations alone and nerf base damage/condi damage scaling, and eliminate various sources of cleanse and immunity. I'm looking for some insight into why what's obvious to me is not the direction they're going.

This isn't EQ, and condis aren't supposed to work like long duration DoTs that you see in some other MMOs. I don't understand why Karl and the others seem hung up on this idea. Combat is dynamic, and conditions have a specialized role of ignoring armor, so they should in fact do less base damage than physical skills and have short durations to make them attractive and balanced in all game modes. Instead, the ratio is skewed way in the other direction, and cleanse and immunity mechanics have crept in everywhere in a poor attempt to control it.

This introduces all kinds of problems that harm the overall game experience - combat in general is way too clutchy, armor/toughness is underpowered, damaging conditions are too prolific across classes, damage is generally too high relative to passive defense, and you have to build your kit around anti-condi, which is uninteresting and restricts build customization. Perhaps worst of all, conditions and physical will never be balanced - conditions will always either be underpowered in PvP or overpowered in PvE with mobs having to have specialized mechanics to make them seem balanced. It really makes no sense whatsoever. Balancing them around target armor values allows for a more natural balancing path where condi takes on a specific role relative to physical damage, and would allow both to be balanced through encounter design in both PvP and PvE contexts.

Toughness is not underpowered.Confusion is the official "burst condition" at the moment.Damage in general really shouldn't be lower relative to passive defense, that would lead to boring fights that last forever.

You're advocating for something I don't want to see in-game ever again in any PvP format: bunker metas, where everything rolls the tankiest setup and just camps nodes. There's a reason tank stats like Minstrel's and Trailblazer's aren't and won't be in sPvP, toughness isn't the crippled stat you're trying to paint.

In the current PvP meta there is almost ideal balance between condi and power representation (this applies to meta builds of course):

• For power we have holo, daredevil and base S/d thief, spellbreaker, druid and soulbeast, in way smaller representation DH and herald.
• For Condi we have scourge, mirage and chrono. Not sure if burn guard variants are to be considered meta since they aren't seen often or at all in my usual MMR range (1600-1700).
• For supports we have Firebrand (Magi's) and the less optimal auramancer (usually Mender's).

Where exactly is the condi "meta" dominating anything?, have you seen comps for monthly tournament winners and tried to classify what kind of damage they favor?.

That's just PvP though, in organized PvE (raids and fractals) the vast majority of bosses have power DPS topping the charts, open world has always favored burst for trash mobs since the game's inception. I trust you know gw2raidar and know how to check global stats.

The only real issue comes with WvW and how you don't have a single person or a limited group of people hitting you with condis but entire squads, the real "issue" would be how condis scale in Zerg versus Zerg scenarios.

TL;DR: you don't really know what you're talking about

Degeneration (via "conditions" and "hexes") were armor ignoring DoTs in GW1, and were capped. This meant it was used as pressure to spread out across group encounters. GW1 was instanced, and had more groups of enemies and less focus on single enemy damage sponges (this isn't to say there weren't bosses nor damage sponges).

GW2 did not go that route but instead squashed all hex/conditions into the conditions we know today. They also introduced damage statistics (in this case condi) onto gear in the traditional manner found in MMOs. GW1 didn't do this, so they were able to balance on individual skills much more frequently (IMO, but correct me if I am wrong!).

The function of "DoTs" is different between these two games. My issue is that the condi gameplay doesn't necessarily differ from the power game play that much in GW2. They both can burst for whatever reason (I want to say this has been reduced, but WvW plays mostly the same pre and post "condi nerf"), and many of the encounters fall down to a few damage sponge targets in PvE which doesn't leave much room for differing play styles anyway. Technical limitations makes sense as to why they want a few enemy targets in open world of course.

Zooooooomm!

@"BadSuggestions" said:

@"Isn't there a spoilers option for this?" said:If it were me. I wouldn't have turned every single condi into just another Bleed (stack intensity and damage over time).

How uninspired.

So now you have confusion and torment still ticking like a bleed regardless if you attack or move. IMO, they should have done double the damage on those specific circumstances to leave more counter play or control, and dropped their bleeding DoT. Like in GW1, you wouldn't spam crap if you had

Backfire

or

Empathy

on you. Effectively, this allowed a Mesmer to control opponents with

Positive Punishment

. Now Mesmers in GW2 are less about control than they were before. I hope I don't need to explain how similar bleed and burn are... I would have also doubled that decrease healing effect on poison and reduced its duration or damage (or stacks?) so it can be used in a more strategical manner for that purpose. Just to differentiate it from "Just Another Bleed."

Furthermore if a class lacked a normal dot (bleed) then just give it to them.

It's not like we're holding the new specializations to theme at all anymore.

Like really, a Scourage can output burn so easily? You know what necromancers had to give up in order to burn on their own back then? A grand master trait. BUT NOW! You can just burn w.e. and not even bother with that

Dhuumfire

stuff. Oh in addition to their bleeds poisons and torments. Woot!

Lastly, this game doesn't seem to care about Debuffs, which is ironic given that other MMOs do that, and raids suddenly get introduced. I'd prolly do my "ramping up" idea involving vulnerability, like by increasing the maximum stacks or their effectiveness or output sources (although there are plenty already). Right now, it's usually just a thing that happens with little consideration (except maybe in Spvp?). This is instead of "ramping up" the damage condition outputs in order to influence the "ramping up" game play style with condis. Obviously condi cleanese and resistance would need to be revised. I'd personally make Resistance grant 100% condi damage reduction and let it interact in a linear manner with vulnerability for variety in counter play (besides just more strips...). And maybe let Super Speed give soft crowd control immunity so those classes that grant such things have more group composition potential. Possibly make it a boon.

Okay rant over. Did I miss the OP? I forget. BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE

It isn't really completely about conditions. It's about the increased actions per minute across the board with each expansion. Sorry, let me say that differently. The amount of spam each "Elite Specialization" introduced. Boons condis, dodges, etc. All of it! You won't see core classes output those kinds of heals/condis/damage/boons without sacrificing a whole lot of something else. This had widened the spectrum of extremes (burst and bunker notably).

Kbed.

op has a problem of not understanding pve at all as well as op does not get that pve does not care about these things at all in open world of pve. and this post about pvp should be moved to the pvp forums where it properly belongs and not in the pve forums :# :#

Oh, this post. What a mess...

Can we just start over? Pretend you didn't post this and instead suggest that we split PvP and PvE? I think that would be best for all involved.

@"Lunateric.3708" said:You're advocating for something I don't want to see in-game ever again in any PvP format: bunker metas, where everything rolls the tankiest setup and just camps nodes. There's a reason tank stats like Minstrel's and Trailblazer's aren't and won't be in sPvP, toughness isn't the crippled stat you're trying to paint.

In the current PvP meta there is almost ideal balance between condi and power representation (this applies to meta builds of course):

• For power we have holo, daredevil and base S/d thief, spellbreaker, druid and soulbeast, in way smaller representation DH and herald.
• For Condi we have scourge, mirage and chrono. Not sure if burn guard variants are to be considered meta since they aren't seen often or at all in my usual MMR range (1600-1700).
• For supports we have Firebrand (Magi's) and the less optimal auramancer (usually Mender's).

Where exactly is the condi "meta" dominating anything?, have you seen comps for monthly tournament winners and tried to classify what kind of damage they favor?.

That's just PvP though, in organized PvE (raids and fractals) the vast majority of bosses have power DPS topping the charts, open world has always favored burst for trash mobs since the game's inception. I trust you know gw2raidar and know how to check global stats.

The only real issue comes with WvW and how you don't have a single person or a limited group of people hitting you with condis but entire squads, the real "issue" would be how condis scale in Zerg versus Zerg scenarios.

TL;DR: you don't really know what you're talking about

Yeah, no I'm actually not. In fact, overpowered condi with too much immunity and resistance is one of the reason we have bunker problems. Condi ignores armor - it's supposed to be to deal with bunkers. The problem is that literally everything in the game is poorly balanced and there's too much immunity and cleanse.

https://qtfy.eu/guildwars/benchmarks-11-07-17/

Sorry, you don't know what you're talking about.

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@"Lunateric.3708" said:You're advocating for something I don't want to see in-game ever again in any PvP format:

bunker metas

, where everything rolls the tankiest setup and just camps nodes. There's a reason tank stats like Minstrel's and Trailblazer's aren't and won't be in sPvP, toughness isn't the crippled stat you're trying to paint.

In the current PvP meta there is almost ideal balance between condi and power representation (this applies to meta builds of course):

• For power we have holo, daredevil and base S/d thief, spellbreaker, druid and soulbeast, in way smaller representation DH and herald.
• For Condi we have scourge, mirage and chrono. Not sure if burn guard variants are to be considered meta since they aren't seen often or at all in my usual MMR range (1600-1700).
• For supports we have Firebrand (Magi's) and the less optimal auramancer (usually Mender's).

Where exactly is the condi "meta" dominating anything?, have you seen comps for monthly tournament winners and tried to classify what kind of damage they favor?.

That's just PvP though, in organized PvE (raids and fractals) the vast majority of bosses have power DPS topping the charts, open world has always favored burst for trash mobs since the game's inception. I trust you know gw2raidar and know how to check global stats.

The only real issue comes with WvW and how you don't have a single person or a limited group of people hitting you with condis but entire squads, the real "issue" would be how condis scale in Zerg versus Zerg scenarios.

TL;DR:

you don't really know what you're talking about

QTFY hasn't updated their benchmarks since november man... Look at the dates.The landscape hasn't changed that much in general, but it IS different.

Also, if there's a lot of condis, but also a lot of ways to deal with condis... Isn't that what you'd call balance?

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@"Lunateric.3708" said:You're advocating for something I don't want to see in-game ever again in any PvP format:

bunker metas

, where everything rolls the tankiest setup and just camps nodes. There's a reason tank stats like Minstrel's and Trailblazer's aren't and won't be in sPvP, toughness isn't the crippled stat you're trying to paint.

In the current PvP meta there is almost ideal balance between condi and power representation (this applies to meta builds of course):

• For power we have holo, daredevil and base S/d thief, spellbreaker, druid and soulbeast, in way smaller representation DH and herald.
• For Condi we have scourge, mirage and chrono. Not sure if burn guard variants are to be considered meta since they aren't seen often or at all in my usual MMR range (1600-1700).
• For supports we have Firebrand (Magi's) and the less optimal auramancer (usually Mender's).

Where exactly is the condi "meta" dominating anything?, have you seen comps for monthly tournament winners and tried to classify what kind of damage they favor?.

That's just PvP though, in organized PvE (raids and fractals) the vast majority of bosses have power DPS topping the charts, open world has always favored burst for trash mobs since the game's inception. I trust you know gw2raidar and know how to check global stats.

The only real issue comes with WvW and how you don't have a single person or a limited group of people hitting you with condis but entire squads, the real "issue" would be how condis scale in Zerg versus Zerg scenarios.

TL;DR:

you don't really know what you're talking about

you do understand those are benchmarks on a void and haven't been updated properly, right?. If you actually want to keep tabs on raid golem benchmarks you use this now:

• https://snowcrows.com/

If you want to see realistic benchmarks, from actual bosses, you look at this now (be careful with comparing 99 or 90 percentiles, recommend you actually discriminate by encounter):

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

As for the whole armor and condi argument I can't really be bothered to argue something logically flawed.