Condi Suggestions

I'm not a condi hater, but there's a reason why complaints about conditions are so widespread. I don't think the issue is that condition damage is too strong, though. I think it's an issue of the mechanics surrounding condition damage being very weakly developed. It's way too much about running condi cleanse skills & traits in your build and not nearly enough about anything else. The fact that attributes work in a more asymmetrical way with condition damage as opposed to physical damage is something of an issue, but a comparatively unimportant one that is better addressed in an indirect way.

Here are some systemic changes I would make -

a.) Condi cleanse should generally be weaker than it is. I.e. removing only a certain # of stacks or certain conditions. Condi clenase is overpowerd and dominates PvP due to lack of other ways to deal with condi damage, which is a problem that harms overall gameplay and build strategy.

a.) Regeneration should stack intensity, so support builds can more effectively counter condition damage on their allies

b.) Vitality and Toughness should both be reworked. Vitality should be focused on countering burst damage by improving endurance regen. Toughness should be focused on countering sustained damage with total armor affecting physical damage and toughness alone affecting condition damage. I think this would make way more thematic and mechanical sense than how they are designed currently, and would help make defensive stats more competitive with offensive ones.

a.) most condi cleanses already do only remove a certain number of stacks or certain conditions, there are very few that remove all active conditions.

b.) I agree, regen should stack in intensity, its rather useless as a duration stack.

c.) That would be terrible... HP stats like Vitality are important for any MMO that has even a remotely freeform build system, which GW2 does. Toughness shouldn't be split off from armor either, all you'd accomplish there is making a reliance on everyone to stack toughness to counter conditions and it'd be impossible to build high damage resistance builds since everyone in every armor class would have the same armor values. Instead, we should get 50% benefit of armor+toughness to condition damage. Some might try to reason "how will armor reduce the damage you take from a condition" well, lets look at bleeding as an example. If you get cut through armor, the cut isn't going to be as deep, the armor absorbed part of the impact and saved you from a more devastating injury, as a result you're bleeding less. If that's too strong, they could work it out to have them translate into reduced duration of incoming conditions.

agree with the toughness rework. I dont know how you could plain to balance condi if you can increase its power by a stat , but cant increase the defense with a stat. I understand that you cast cleanse skills but that just force tank players to run a full condi cleanse build.

@Panda.1967 said:a.) most condi cleanses already do only remove a certain number of stacks or certain conditions, there are very few that remove all active conditions.

b.) I agree, regen should stack in intensity, its rather useless as a duration stack.

c.) That would be terrible... HP stats like Vitality are important for any MMO that has even a remotely freeform build system, which GW2 does. Toughness shouldn't be split off from armor either, all you'd accomplish there is making a reliance on everyone to stack toughness to counter conditions and it'd be impossible to build high damage resistance builds since everyone in every armor class would have the same armor values. Instead, we should get 50% benefit of armor+toughness to condition damage. Some might try to reason "how will armor reduce the damage you take from a condition" well, lets look at bleeding as an example. If you get cut through armor, the cut isn't going to be as deep, the armor absorbed part of the impact and saved you from a more devastating injury, as a result you're bleeding less. If that's too strong, they could work it out to have them translate into reduced duration of incoming conditions.

Some of your comments on c. don't hold a lot of water, IMO. The vitality comment in particular doesn't really make sense, since dodging and damage mitigation would already be variable - health doesn't really need to be as well. I actually think the system would work better if Health wasn't variable simply because it would give more weight to healing, which is kind of needed in the game. Although, you could still have Vitality affect Health pools by a smaller amount than they do currently with this change if Anet wanted.

In any case, everything you're talking about is just a matter of numbers tuning. Conceptually, having Vitality counter burst (through improving dodge) and Toughness counter sustain (through passive mitigation of all damage sources) makes way more sense than what we have currently, where both defensive stats are kind of half-ass and there's no attribute tied to dodging when that's the most important defensive tool you have. It's a major flaw and why offensive stats dominate the game from beginning to end - because offensive stats actually do more for your defense than defensive stats do in most cases.

My suggestion of not using armor for condi damage was mostly arbitrary; it doesn't matter that much whether they do or not. The important point was that toughness/armor should reduce both physical damage and condition damage.

Vitality should get changed form Points per Points (laughable 10 HP more per point, so 50 Points are just ridiculous 500 HP more, which won#t help you much in any battle, thats just 1 AA hit or Condi Tick barely staying longer alive ...) into a Percent per Point Attribute, because then would have each Point you invent into Vitality have a much strogner impact actually on your Max health, thus beign of a much better help for you to survive longer bursty Power Buillds and annoying Condi Builds.

Think of a 15000 HP Thief with 1000 Vitality raises his Vitality unter the dumb useless current Vitality System to 1750 Vitality.Thats 750*10 = 7500 HP more, so you would have then 22500 HP as that Thief.

7500 HP are nothing in this game, these 7500 HP more will barely keep you alive significantly longer. Agaisnt Condi Builds maybe, as long you can effectively remove them always, before they become too dangerous, there you wil lsurvive with these 7500 Hp longer ...But agaisnt a Power Build that deals insane critical hits won't save you these 7500 HP more at al, you survive maaybe 1-2 seconds longer. And why is that so? Because Toughness is crap and the whole defense gameplay in this whole game has for now 5 years absolutely no synergy within each other, so that the player actually fells a massive differnece also too in comba,t that people in PvP and WvW actually will have a harder time to defeat you with your defensive build, that they need actualyl to fight agaisnt you longer to wear you down, and that also as a high critical offensive build, which shoudl also take significantly longer to kill <you, than a not so bursty build...

The sad fact in GW2 is, you can play a high defensive build in this game, and you stil ldie basicalyl exactly same as fats as like a nonm defensive build, because all the defensive attributes barely have significant influence on the felt damage, that you take. Your Health Pool doesn#t significantly grow large enough, that you can actually see a massive difference between you with your like 1750 Vitality and someone else whos not defensive and has only like 1250 Vitality or lesser, and you see that defensive builds sadly also aren't more better in survivability, cause the defensive attributes all have absolute NO EFFECT on mechanics, like Rate of Criticals that you receive - ANet relies the game balance here way too much onto the kind of obsolete Weakness Condition, when in fact that is a Combat Balance Mechanic, that should be balanced through an Attribute, not a Condition.

We have no unfluence, aside of using a Boon, again here, thats somethign that should be balanced through an Attribute - to influence through a defensive build our own endurance Regeneration. Again are we here dependant upon a Skill Effect - this time a Boon - Vigor, which is easily again an absolute obsolete effect in the game that could get quickly replaced through a better attribute balancement, and nobody would ever miss Vigor.

But lets return for now to my Vitality Exampel from above, lets repeat that example with an percent based gameplay, and lets see, how much more effective and impactful such a vitality formula would be, to make Vitality per se for everyone just more important, than it is right now.

15000 HP Thief, with 1000 Vitality. Each Vitality Point here woudl increase the Halth instead of +10 HP now with +0,1% more Max Health.0,1% of 15000 = 15 HP. 750 Ponts* 15 = 11250 HP-7500 = difference of +3750 H? = Bonus of +50% exactly.Now imagine for a second, how Naet could even further influence the Class Balance here now bett,er with a reworked Base Health System with Class based individual Base Health Values, so that Vitality could become for each Class also individually more or less important, as each Class would receive this way also individualyl stronger or lesser strogn more Health from Vitality, due to each point percentally affectign now your Max Health,m instead of receiving just a flat +10HP per Point.

So a Warrior for example which could have a Base Health of 20000 would receive instead of 15 Points per Vitality then 20 Points, thus makign Vitality for this class more impactful and effective by design, than for a Thief.The Thief on the other side could for example have a better outcome from his Precision upon its Critical Hit Rate and so on.. thats the way how you individualyl balance classes - through strengths and weaknesses in the Attribute System, that each Class also individualyl has its strenths and weaknesses upon the Attributes.For Vitality has the been from begin on alway th most overdue change thats neccessary by now to balance the game, especialyl now with its out of control conditions since 2015