If there were no damage conditions in guild wars

Condi gets a lot of complaints around here. If you want to fight condis, you have to gimp your awesome build by bringing condi cleanse. and then use that condi cleanse wisely and skillfully, which is an imbalance against your opponent, who is probably just unleashing condi after condi. As a gameplay element, most people find it unfun. And what are games about really.

Have you ever thought about what guild wars would be like without damage conditions? Condi is a great concept that brings a new way to play to guild wars, but in practice it just outperforms power based gameplay. If the game was power only, what would happen? I'm guessing heavy classes would probably have an easier time facetanking masses of incoming damage. Could we perhaps transform all damage condis into debuffs? lets hear your thoughts

Conditions would still be used but for a different reason... support. :P

Condi as a whole does not outperform direct damage as a whole. If there are outlier condi builds that do too much condi damage, then they can be brought into line. The only ones complaining when an outlier direct damage build is nerfed are the ones playing it. Balance can be achieved by changing some numbers. Changing the game at a fundamental level would be an extreme reaction.

Opportunity costs make for better game balance. Needing to bring a counter to what the other guy is doing has opportunity cost. In the same way, bringing invulnerability frames to counter a direct damage burst also carries an opportunity cost. Enabling people who want to eliminate opportunity costs makes for a poorer overall game.

As to "most people find it unfun," I'm not sure I believe that.

Conditions should not be able to spike you to death under a second. Also, a power spike is easier to notice, allowing a player to pop a block or invul, all while applied conditions happily kill you while you're using your defensive skills. Some conditions require no player input to be applied (see vid where Svanir gets killed by idle elementalist), or very little effort.

Oh condi.... let me complain some and get it off my chest..

Cleanses don't really help me so much against condi builds. I don't really understand people pulling cleanse card against people complaining about condi dmg. There is no immunity after cleansed, so they can just keep spamming condi on you until you die. Condis stack and tick fast :/

So how long does it take to die? Well, since you get 5k condi dmg per tick on you, sometimes you won't even be able to get an heal spell off before condi kills you.

Condi damage should not be such burst damage. It should not be an alternative to power builds. It should be just additional damage over time for using some certain skills.

I can't tell you how much I hate condi builds..

I'd say indigo brings a pretty strong argument to the table. Making people reign in their builds a bit in order to deal with potential other builds makes for any easier time of balancing things.

But something still feels wrong here. It's a game, so why do I feel like I'm not having a fun time doing this? I've been playing burn firebrand as opposed to my thief main recently, and although I'll admit it's amazing annihilating people with endless stacks of burn, I still feel disgusted at how unfair it must feel for the guy in the receiving end. I mean sure, that guy should have brought a better build, but it was so mindless the way i killed him that even if he had, he would have had to do a much better job of countering me that i did attacking him to even out the playing field.

The thing is is that to bring condi builds under control, you'd need to basically nerf them to the point that power builds are back on top. So why not change them completely? make them into support elements than offensive ones. That way, people still need have an opportunity cost, but don't have to worry about offensive conditions.

It's really funny how people were just fine with power builds reigning supreme for years and then suddenly conditions are also viable and everyone's mad.

@Hyper Cutter.9376 said:It's really funny how people were just fine with power builds reigning supreme for years and then suddenly conditions are also viable and everyone's mad.

Huh yeah it's almost like the playerbase doesn't like conditions or something

@Fipmip.7219 said:As a gameplay element, most people find it unfun.

I doubt this, I know there's a number of very vocal people who hate conditions for some reason or other, but to conclude most people don't like it seems nonsensical.

@Snowywonders.1378 said:GW1 was like that,

You mean with conditions like burning and poison and many hexes that, in GW2, have been merged into conditions? No, no it wasn't.

@Mokoko.9825 said:

Cleanses don't really help me so much against condi builds. I don't really understand people pulling cleanse card against people complaining about condi dmg. There is no immunity after cleansed, so they can just keep spamming condi on you until you die. Condis stack and tick fast :/

Cleansing isn't supposed to let you ignore an entire opponent or just get a free win against any condition build, of course there's no free immunity with it. And power builds can just keep spamming damage on you until you die, that's how combat works, you damage each other until one of you dies. If you expect the single fact you equiped a cleanse to give you a free win against any condition build you're expecting way too much.

@Fipmip.7219 said:Have you ever thought about what guild wars would be like without damage conditions? Condi is a great concept that brings a new way to play to guild wars, but in practice it just outperforms power based gameplay. If the game was power only, what would happen? I'm guessing heavy classes would probably have an easier time facetanking masses of incoming damage. Could we perhaps transform all damage condis into debuffs? lets hear your thoughts

Toughness would be stronger; the people who complain about conditions now would probably die just as often, just more quickly, as power damage is applied instantly.What sort of debuffs were you thinking about, because that matters a lot. But there's a good chance conditions would then only be viable in (semi-)organised groups.Now luckily they'll (probably) never go for this as (I assume they realise) most complaints about conditions are based on people not understanding conditions (they do more damage in average situations because they have more counters) or insisting all condition builds be taken together for balancing while (presumably) wanting power builds balanced by build.

Now if there are specific skills or builds that happen to use conditions that are overpowered then those should be nerfed, but keep the complaints about those and don't assume you should never die from one of the two damage types.

When i say "as a gameplay element, most people find it unfun," I mean the part where they have to make builds that have mitigation against both power and condi, not the application of condis themselves. I'm sure if every single person ran a condi build, there'd be a lot less complaints. The fact that there is so much complaining is a big sign of a widespread distaste.

@Fipmip.7219 said:Condi gets a lot of complaints around here. If you want to fight condis, you have to kitten your awesome build by bringing condi cleanse. and then use that condi cleanse wisely and skillfully, which is an imbalance against your opponent, who is probably just unleashing condi after condi. As a gameplay element, most people find it unfun. And what are games about really.

Have you ever thought about what guild wars would be like without damage conditions? Condi is a great concept that brings a new way to play to guild wars, but in practice it just outperforms power based gameplay. If the game was power only, what would happen? I'm guessing heavy classes would probably have an easier time facetanking masses of incoming damage. Could we perhaps transform all damage condis into debuffs? lets hear your thoughts

No, I have always thought condis were a pretty prominent part of this franchise since the early launch of Guild Wars Prophecies in 2005. They've been a part of every major mainstream MMO created, and countering condis via cleanse is pretty much the same mechanic as countering power based damage via blocking. What's unfun about it? Weird.

@Menzies The Heretic.3415 said:Conditions should not be able to spike you to death under a second. Also, a power spike is easier to notice, allowing a player to pop a block or invul, all while applied conditions happily kill you while you're using your defensive skills. Some conditions require no player input to be applied (see vid where Svanir gets killed by idle elementalist), or very little effort.

Power spoke damage is no easier to notice that Condi spike damage. This is a false statement. Why do so many people say condi still damage when using defensive skills? You used the skills at the wrong time. Why not use the skills before the conditions were applied not after. Also that conditions maniacally tend to appear on you.

@Sigmoid.7082 said:

@"Menzies The Heretic.3415" said:Conditions should not be able to spike you to death under a second. Also, a power spike is easier to notice, allowing a player to pop a block or invul, all while applied conditions happily kill you while you're using your defensive skills. Some conditions require no player input to be applied (see vid where Svanir gets killed by idle elementalist), or very little effort.

You should play a thief, then come back and talk about "using the skills at the wrong time" or "you have defensive skills to avoid condition damage, it's easy".

@Atramentous.1923 said:

No, I have always thought condis were a pretty prominent part of this franchise since the early launch of Guild Wars Prophecies in 2005. They've been a part of every major mainstream MMO created, and countering condis via cleanse is pretty much the same mechanic as countering power based damage via blocking. What's unfun about it? Weird.

I meant as opposed to playing with power, which i'm guessing most people try first when playing guild wars. Either way out of everything i just asserted, it's a very odd thing to nitpick.

@Sigmoid.7082 said:

Power spoke damage is no easier to notice that Condi spike damage. This is a false statement. Why do so many people say condi still damage when using defensive skills? You used the skills at the wrong time. Why not use the skills before the conditions were applied not after. Also that conditions maniacally tend to appear on you.

Before the conditions were applied? You can only cleanse condis that are already on you, meaning you have take the hit before you can heal it.

the issue with conditions comes from pvp/wvw. Not pve. People who constantly say power dominates condition and condition is supporting damage probably only do pve stuff. In pvp/wvw, it's rather ridiculous since it's a dump and run thing. The amount of burst from condition stacks ever since HoT outdamages direct damage and they do simply too much to even let you cleanse in time, or your cleanse doesn't even remove that particular condi due to limit.

I personally still prefer conditions when bleed used to be the main DoT we had and it actually takes some kiting and time before the enemy die to.. DoTs. The current meta is just gross when condi burst is too strong and the target drops instantly.

If we just had dedicated, effectual healing roles, the interplay of condi vs. power would be strategic and balanced instead of something that over-centralizes the requirement of cleanse on every class, regardless of build. You could offload a bit of the responsibility and make another role viable, only really adding to the depth of the combat, which is something that the game severely needs.

@Shirlias.8104

you have defensive skills to avoid condition damage, it's easyThis is something I never said. Stop changing the context of my reply in an attempt to projecting your own problems and prejudice through words I didn't say.

@Fipmip.7219Read exactly what I quoted

Also, a power spike is easier to notice, allowing a player to pop a block or invul, all while applied conditions happily kill you while you're using your defensive skillsThis implies that conditions go through block or invulnerability. Hence me saying why are you using defensive skills after you have taken the hit not before to avoid the application in the first place. Some people have this weird notion that they should be able to negate/mitigate all condition damage completely.

@Sigmoid.7082 said:

@Menzies The Heretic.3415 said:Conditions should not be able to spike you to death under a second. Also, a power spike is easier to notice, allowing a player to pop a block or invul, all while applied conditions happily kill you while you're using your defensive skills. Some conditions require no player input to be applied (see vid where Svanir gets killed by idle elementalist), or very little effort.

Don't tell me you never once died of random conditions being stacked on you while you didn't notice your health bar suddenly dropped below zero. And don't tell me when you didn't notice that you should've popped some defensive skills to prevent said random conditions. You know I'm not talking about skill animations here, stop fooling anyone.

I'd seriously love to see a GW2 experiment (for example be it just for aprils fools day or for a test weekend to just see the reactions of us players), how a GW2 would run, if the Condition System would be so overworked, that there are no damaging conditions anymore.I'm pretty sure the combat would make then again much more fun, if players would have again to focus on power to deal bursty damage and all conditions in the game are just there to support your combat style in battles, tactical elements that just only influence the outcome of the battles, but don't work like now as superior armor ignoring damage sources that are braindead to play and require of the players absolutely no skill, other than spammign the enemy ful lwith conditions and watchign braindeadly, like a mechanism does all the work for you, instead of your active skill in using direct attacks in either close or ranged combat.

In regard of such a condition rework, I'd love to see Conditions that work like this:

Poison = Reduces Heal Efficiency by 25% and reduces Ferocity of a Foe.Weakness = Reduces Critical Hit Chance and reduces Expertise of a FoeCripple = Reduces Movement Speed by 33% and reduces Precision of a FoeChill = Slows Skill Recharge Times by 50% and reduces Vitality of a FoeBurning = Reduces Endurance as you Move and reduces Concentration of a FoeVulnerability = Increases Chance to be interrupted through AA's and reduces Toughness of a FoeSlow = Reduces Attack Speed by 50% and reduces Endurance Regeneration of a FoeBleeding = Dodge Rolls hurt you now and reduces Healing Power of a FoeTorment = CC Effects last on you 50% longer and reduces Power of a FoeImmobilization = Stops your Movement and disables your Weapon Skills temporarely (Removal of Stun)Fear = Forces you to Run away and lets you lose Class specific Gameplay Ressources like Adrenaline, Initiative, Energy ect. (Removal of Taunt)Blindness = Chance of 90% to miss attacks and being hit has a Chance to interrupt you.Confusion = Removes Friendly Fire from affected Foes and brings Chaos under the Controls of a Foe, letting them suddenly move into maybe unwanted directionsExhaustion New - Skills gain longer Cast Times and reduces Wisdom of a Foe (Condition Damage changed to Wisdom, Wisdom increases now the Condition Efficiency of how strong the secondary Condition Effects affect your foes, no need anymore for Condition Damage as Attribute, if there woudl be no Damage dealing Conditions anymore that deal damage over time,

This way we would have not anymore Conditions that deal any Damage over Time, Skills that perform these Conditions may deal self some kind of damage, but so more condition heavy a skill is, so lesser direct damage shold it deal. So lesse Condition heavy a skill is, so more direct damage should that skill be able to deal max, so that there would be a clear split between either focused on damage dealing, or beign focused on conditions and significantly lesser damage dealing .

Stacking of Conditions could then also be removed, unless Anet woudl want to keep usign this mechanism for stackign of secondary Condition Effects to reduce stronger the attributes this way.

Would be seriously interested into seeing, how and if this could seriously work out somehow xD

@Mokoko.9825 said:

Cleanses don't really help me so much against condi builds. I don't really understand people pulling cleanse card against people complaining about condi dmg. There is no immunity after cleansed, so they can just keep spamming condi on you until you die. Condis stack and tick fast :/

So how long does it take to die? Well, since you get 5k condi dmg per tick on you, sometimes you won't even be able to get an heal spell off before condi kills you.

Condi damage should not be such burst damage. It should not be an alternative to power builds. It should be just additional damage over time for using some certain skills.

I can't tell you how much I hate condi builds..

While I get your frustration, I have to ask, "What are you doing while the other player is applying the stacks of different conditions necessary to get up to 5K per second?" Do you not know their tells? No dodge or block on the skills which apply the most stacks? No stuns to lock them down while you apply your burst?

Yes, condi can be applied fairly quickly, but so can direct damage. Most professions have less available invulnerability skills than they have available cleanses. A Herald power build can do 8.5K damage with Coalescence of Ruin and Hammer Bolt for 3-4K to a glass geared foe. At the same time, the protection and regen Facets they dropped to add Might/Fury runs for plenty long enough to kill their opponent. Vault can do way more than 5K per second and can be used 2-3 times in succession, then followed up by other high-damage attacks until it's ready again, if needed.

@Fipmip.7219 said:

@Hyper Cutter.9376 said:It's really funny how people were just fine with power builds reigning supreme for years and then suddenly conditions are also viable and everyone's mad.

It isn't the player-base that doesn't like conditions, it's the subset of the player-base whose power builds reigned supreme who don't want to change.

That said, there would be consequences to removing all damaging conditions.

1) What would replace the damaging conditions? The game already has a lot of debuffs. How many more would have to be created?2) What effect would these debuffs have on damage? Remember, you'd be removing one of the two sources of damage, so the debuffs would have to add damage somehow to compensate.3) Would ANet have to redo a lot of animations? If they don't redo them, the people who can't seem to ID the skills would have just as much trouble IDing them to be able to avoid the high direct damage these skills would now do.4) What effect would making such a change have on balance patches? A radical change to how damage is applied would doubtless involve the balance team. That could delay ongoing balance patches.5) Who would be angry? ANet cannot even give something away without getting some people upset. If Condi is that much of a problem, there must be a lot of people using it. Some of them are not going to be happy. People who'd geared for condi damage would need to take whatever steps are needed to re-gear. That would generate complaints.6) Gear would have to change. A lot of prefixes would either be dropped or altered. Who would do that? What impact would this have not only on balance patches, but on content patches?

There could be other consequences I'm not thinking of. Frankly, though, the above would be enough to make the change prohibitive in terms of impact on things other people want. Adjusting outlier condi builds would be a lot simpler.

Really, all it needs is reduce damage. Atm Condition is safer AND is dealing more damage than Power. Why not immediately fix that? It's a no brainer. Condition should be less damage because it's safer.

@Orpheal.8263 said:I'd seriously love to see a GW2 experiment (for example be it just for aprils fools day or for a test weekend to just see the reactions of us players), how a GW2 would run, if the Condition System would be so overworked, that there are no damaging conditions anymore.I'm pretty sure the combat would make then again much more fun, if players would have again to focus on power to deal bursty damage and all conditions in the game are just there to support your combat style in battles, tactical elements that just only influence the outcome of the battles, but don't work like now as superior armor ignoring damage sources that are braindead to play and require of the players absolutely no skill, other than spammign the enemy ful lwith conditions and watchign braindeadly, like a mechanism does all the work for you, instead of your active skill in using direct attacks in either close or ranged combat.

In regard of such a condition rework, I'd love to see Conditions that work like this:

Poison = Reduces Heal Efficiency by 25% and reduces Ferocity of a Foe.Weakness = Reduces Critical Hit Chance and reduces Expertise of a FoeCripple = Reduces Movement Speed by 33% and reduces Precision of a FoeChill = Slows Skill Recharge Times by 50% and reduces Vitality of a FoeBurning = Reduces Endurance as you Move and reduces Concentration of a FoeVulnerability = Increases Chance to be interrupted through AA's and reduces Toughness of a FoeSlow = Reduces Attack Speed by 50% and reduces Endurance Regeneration of a FoeBleeding = Dodge Rolls hurt you now and reduces Healing Power of a FoeTorment = CC Effects last on you 50% longer and reduces Power of a FoeImmobilization = Stops your Movement and disables your Weapon Skills temporarely (Removal of Stun)Fear = Forces you to Run away and lets you lose Class specific Gameplay Ressources like Adrenaline, Initiative, Energy ect. (Removal of Taunt)Blindness = Chance of 90% to miss attacks and being hit has a Chance to interrupt you.Confusion = Removes Friendly Fire from affected Foes and brings Chaos under the Controls of a Foe, letting them suddenly move into maybe unwanted directionsExhaustion New - Skills gain longer Cast Times and reduces Wisdom of a Foe (Condition Damage changed to Wisdom, Wisdom increases now the Condition Efficiency of how strong the secondary Condition Effects affect your foes, no need anymore for Condition Damage as Attribute, if there woudl be no Damage dealing Conditions anymore that deal damage over time,

This way we would have not anymore Conditions that deal any Damage over Time, Skills that perform these Conditions may deal self some kind of damage, but so more condition heavy a skill is, so lesser direct damage shold it deal. So lesse Condition heavy a skill is, so more direct damage should that skill be able to deal max, so that there would be a clear split between either focused on damage dealing, or beign focused on conditions and significantly lesser damage dealing .

Stacking of Conditions could then also be removed, unless Anet woudl want to keep usign this mechanism for stackign of secondary Condition Effects to reduce stronger the attributes this way.

Would be seriously interested into seeing, how and if this could seriously work out somehow xD

++++++1111111, this would be such a nice idea to have this game much much more funny... unfortunately, they will never do it, they should rebalance everything, and off course admit that the condi patch from june 2015 was a completely mess, wich they will never do

@Etienne.3049 said:

@Fipmip.7219 said:As a gameplay element, most people find it unfun.

@Snowywonders.1378 said:GW1 was like that,

@Mokoko.9825 said:

Cleanses don't really help me so much against condi builds. I don't really understand people pulling cleanse card against people complaining about condi dmg. There is no immunity after cleansed, so they can just keep spamming condi on you until you die. Condis stack and tick fast :/

@Fipmip.7219 said:Have you ever thought about what guild wars would be like without damage conditions? Condi is a great concept that brings a new way to play to guild wars, but in practice it just outperforms power based gameplay. If the game was power only, what would happen? I'm guessing heavy classes would probably have an easier time facetanking masses of incoming damage. Could we perhaps transform all damage condis into debuffs? lets hear your thoughts

GW1 did not have condi builds, you were capped at like -10 pips unlike gw2 where condi burst builds exist, but good job you missed the whole point and can argue semantics, you should be proud.

@Fipmip.7219 said:

@Sigmoid.7082 said:

Power spoke damage is no easier to notice that Condi spike damage. This is a false statement. Why do so many people say condi still damage when using defensive skills? You used the skills at the wrong time. Why not use the skills before the conditions were applied not after. Also that conditions maniacally tend to appear on you.

Invuln prevents incoming ConditionsBlocking prevents incoming ConditionsDodging prevents incoming ConditionsReflects prevent and return incoming Conditions

So yes, using defensive abilities before conditions hit IS effective. It's just like trying to counter Power. They don't do you any good to be used after the fact.

You complained earlier about Condi cleanse not providing temporary immunity... do you believe healing should have temporary damage immunity? Of course not, no one does. It's the same thing.

Yes, there was a time when damage condis borderline didn't exist. That time sucked. Hence they were changed to something useful.