Conditions are no longer damage over time

Conditions are no longer damage over time (in all game modes, but especially in wvw and pvp).

The mechanic of "condi cleanse" has basically been totally outpaced by power creep and just how quickly and how many conditions a lot of these overperforming classes can stack up on you. The damage is now basically just power burst now, just applied condi = death. Resistance is basically the only thing that can save you if you get hit by a condi bomb, which back in the day was relatively easy to do. Nowadays its just a joke. And the fact that there is no defensive stat to negate condition damage is laughable when you really look at how much the condi's hit for.

I just had a condi mirage just murder me. Like straight up, I could not touch him, he toyed with me by jaunting around every time I got close, invising when I got close, confusing me with clones for a split second then he was gone again, sword leap away when I got close again. Then he shatter me, all I hear is poof poof poof no cast time no animation just 30 different conditions on me then I go down.

I honestly think it is time to reduce condition damage (a lot of people have been asking for a flat damage nerf accross the board but I worry what this will do to core specs). Either nerf condition damage by 15% in wvw and spvp and go from there, OR nerf mirage and scourge condition application RATE or DAMAGE. These two classes have far too many conditions far too easily. And when you look at other condi builds that have become absolutely obsolete such as burn warrior or guardian that has like 2 damaging conditions only at 1/5th the application, it really makes me wonder what Anet is thinking.

Please. I honestly don't think it is justifiable at all. In open world or raids, who cares. But the players on the receiving end of this joke are becoming fed up. Honestly, how can a mirage (who is one of the most mobile, evasive, pseudo tanky classes in the game mind you) do that much damage? And how can it be that if a scourge touches you catch every disease under the sun?

Either slow down the damage conditions do (like DOUBLE the time it takes to deal damage so I can actually react instead of having to blow everything to survive) or lower condition damage. PLEASE.

@LaFurion.3167 said:I just had a condi mirage just murder me. Like straight up, I could not touch him, he toyed with me by jaunting around every time I got close, invising when I got close, confusing me with clones for a split second then he was gone again, sword leap away when I got close again. Then he shatter me, all I hear is poof poof poof no cast time no animation just 30 different conditions on me then I go down.And yesterday me and my guildie met not one but three condi mirages that tried to cap our north camp. First time in months I've seen enemies even try larger mirage groups. We straight up murdered them. They didnt stand a chance. They did literally zero damage to us. We where two hybrid mirages.

And before that I met a condi chrono that I also straight up murdered in a 1v1. He didnt stand a chance. I lost zero hp in that fight. It was actually only after that fight I even realized he could do some damage because I met him once more in a 1v1 later where he managed to get in a few good condi bombs that took considerable chunks of my hp while he evaded me far better than the first fight (I still won).

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. WIthout knowing the skill of each player and the situation of the fight, saying anything about a class is pointless.

(Note: I mostly play core condi revenant in WvW, so assume bias on this topic.)

From what i can tell the poster's issue is primarily with condition mirage, since their use of confusion is what i assume the "condi bomb" references to.

Aside from specific classes being overtuned or not, if you want to tone down condition damage or application rate across the board, you really have to take into account how this will affect every other condition build. Reading the post i can tell that there is not much of a problem with most other condi builds, so i'm a bit confused as to why this would require a global nerf to conditions.

Since launch the devs basically kept adding damage across the board. I'd say pre-HoT there was something of a condi meta. Then to compensate they added a bunch of cleanse to skills/traits during and post HoT, followed by more damage in PoF, and now for example we have another rune/sigil patch introducing more cleanse (Sigil Of Cleansing [WvW] from 1>3 conditions cleansed.) Currently i would also say there is a power meta in WvW at least, i don't play PvP so can't comment on the state of that gamemode.

I don't agree that cleanse as a mechanic has been outpaced by power creep. I will agree that the rate of condi application has gone up, but this is class specific. The only condi builds i personally come across in EU are Mirage/Scourge, and perhaps one or two Thieves. But in general i'd say it's 90% power builds for roaming at least.

I would agree to reducing damage/sustain across the board, as well as the amount of blocks/unblockables, CC/stunbreaks etc. But only reducing the effectiveness of conditions without looking at the amount of cleanse/power burst currently available will at this point just phase condition builds out of existence completely imo.

Did you use skills while having many stacks of confusion on you? Cause that would explain the! "instadied"Edit: nevermind. I just reread the post, saw the "nerf condi mirage and scourge(scourge? Really? Its not even meta in pve anymore, it is the worst roamer in wvw you can get... Just zerg class and condi scourge isnt even used anymore, scourge gets condies from corrupts mainly these days). I came to the conclusion, after reading Dawdler's post, as well, it is a l2p issue.

Condi is dead though

I'm sure that there is now plenty of options to reduce both condi damage and condi duration that you can pair with plenty of condi cleanse and resistance. I know that it's often a shame to forsake dps runeset/sigils or traits for defensive runesets/sigils and traits but there are there, ready to be used at any moment, ready to give you what you long for: less incoming condi damage.

What do you mean by no longer? There have always been some bursty conditions in this game.

When the game released you had a clear distinction between stacking (eg., bleed, poison) and bursting (confusion, burning) conditions. It may not be as clear anymore with all corruptions and transfers as well as condition damage being normalized sometime around HoT. However, conditions have always had some burst and there have always been some corruptions and transfers to create condi-bombs.

@WraithOfStealth.1624 said:Aside from specific classes being overtuned or not, if you want to tone down condition damage or application rate across the board, you really have to take into account how this will affect every other condition build. Reading the post i can tell that there is not much of a problem with most other condi builds, so i'm a bit confused as to why this would require a global nerf to conditions.I wonder if we could get a compromise between the two extremes: stacking in duration (as it was in the first years), and intensity (as it is now). Maybe cap fire and confusion stacks at 10 max., and let every additional application of fire / confusion increase duration.

I totally agree with you, that there are already enough tools (=condi cleanses), but they are almost useless against some of the condi bomb madness, nowadays. I just died because of a one-second fire tick for 8.8k (vs. core guard + scourge), though I had several condi cleanses ready-to-use. So this post is completely unbiased . . . xD

@enkidu.5937 I would not want to be responsible for balancing the current game, i can tell you that much.

Duration vs Intensity is interesting,

The update that changed damaging conditions to stack intensity was a great way to increase the use of conditions in larger group or zerg fights, as with only duration stacking multiple people running condition builds wouldn't be contributing much. So the issue with a stack-cap would be that if you and a friend are both playing a condition build, and you are both applying the same condition to a target you would effectively be hindering each other if the cap is reached.

On the other hand, now that the conditions stack in intensity it is also much easier to prevent large amounts of damage. If you applied burn to a target before the update, a cleanse would remove the condition and you apply a new instance, which does the same damage as before. Now a cleanse removes all stacks of burn, and you first have to start building up stacks again since damage scales with the amount of stacks. So i would say that intensity stacking is a more active style of gameplay and preferable to the more passive duration stacking to me at least.

I would probably say cleansing only encounters issues when confusion is involved. This will vary per class/build based on their access to active/passive cleanse.

Confusion is a difficult one because it's nearly harmless if you don't activate skills. The problem (if you can call it that) is that it is disgustingly effective as cover condition, even if the duration is like 4 seconds. If i am on my rev ticking say 3-4k/s from torment/poison/burn, and i then cover with 5-10 stacks of confusion while the target is <50%, he is pretty much forced to use a skill to cleanse/heal to survive, but then eats a hefty chunk of damage from confusion. This leaves the target feeling helpless and frustrated as either he lets the 3-4k tick 2-3 more times, or he takes 4-8k in confusion damage from the cleanse which may not even remove all conditions.

It's a tough one for sure, you'd have to be very careful to not render some builds completely ineffective both solo and in groups. Also regarding burn/confusion specifically, for Guardian and Mesmer these are respectively a big part of their identity. Reducing the effectiveness of those conditions in general will make it very hard for those professions to have decent condi builds if they aren't properly compensated.

@"WraithOfStealth.1624" said:The update that changed damaging conditions to stack intensity was a great way to increase the use of conditions in larger group or zerg fights, as with only duration stacking multiple people running condition builds wouldn't be contributing much. So the issue with a stack-cap would be that if you and a friend are both playing a condition build, and you are both applying the same condition to a target you would effectively be hindering each other if the cap is reached. [...]Could also be beneficial, if countered by resistance. 14 stacks confusion over 4secs would be completely negated by a 4secs resistance. When capped at 10 stacks, only these stacks would be negated, but the additional 4 stacks that would increase the duration instead, would still do damage after resistance runs out. But I'm not familiar with all those builds, group and zerg meta around, so I can only guess.

What I see, also in other games, are two common approaches to balancing. First one aims on a constant balance, mainly for competitive modes, to keep the competition . . . ehm, ya competitive xD

Second one is a dynamic "balance", where the devs intentionally want an up and down of specific builds or mechanics, mainly for casual modes, to bait the masses with some new fresh OP stuff back to the game.

"Heard about the new OP condi build in GW2? Lets try it out!", after some months they leave the game, looking for something fresh, and after a while return to GW2 with "Heard about the new OP build, that counters condi? Lets try it out!"

cycle of doom xD

Condition damage remains damage over time. PvP people will often post the damage breakdown after a fight and the total condition damage tends to dwarf the total power damage. This because it is measured OVER TIME , is often cleansed and applied again. If it were not damage over time 1 second of conditions would do as much damage as those conditions running 10 seconds .

There are fewer condition builds each and every day. Something as simple as swapping a weapon removing three of them means that the condition builds that do succceed must apply conditions in batches. This loading of multiple conditions is as much a result of all those added cleanses as anything . If there are fewer seconds between one cleanse and the next, more damage has to be done in a shorter period of time.

@enkidu.5937 said:

@WraithOfStealth.1624 said:Aside from specific classes being overtuned or not, if you want to tone down condition damage or application rate across the board, you really have to take into account how this will affect

every other

condition build. Reading the post i can tell that there is not much of a problem with most other condi builds, so i'm a bit confused as to why this would require a global nerf to conditions.I wonder if we could get a compromise between the two extremes: stacking in duration (as it was in the first years), and intensity (as it is now). Maybe cap fire and confusion stacks at 10 max., and let every additional application of fire / confusion increase duration.

I think there still a bias among the entire playerbase when it comes to a condition death. As example you died to an 8.8 burn tick. This means you had around that in health remaining. Had a power build removed that 8.8k of health in a single attack (and there many attacks that do this much damage and more) , would you react the same way?

@"babazhook.6805" said:I think there still a bias among the entire playerbase when it comes to a condition death. As example you died to an 8.8 burn tick. This means you had around that in health remaining. Had a power build removed that 8.8k of health in a single attack (and there many attacks that do this much damage and more) , would you react the same way?It was just one single tick because I died. The whole bomb would have been like 4secs with 8.8k damage each, and addidional power damage on top ofc. Sure it partially is a ltp issue. But there are a lot of situations, where I manage to cleanse the bomb immediately, just to get another bomb some seconds after, despite dodging. And I didn't say: "Leave crazy power bombs as they are and solely adjust condi bombs." It's both through the roof imo and need some adjustment, same for some bunker builds.

Imo, power or condi burst should be the counter against bunker builds, to drop them below zero, before they heal up over time again.

The problem at least with asking for a condition reduction application rate to scourge, is scourge is the only reliable boon corrupter that can keep up with the ridiculous boon spam. Before asking for a condition reduction, there needs to be a heavy reduction in the application of boons. If anything, scourge needs to corrupt more boons into conditions than they do now, or other classes need a massive buff in their boon corrupting abilities.

@"LaFurion.3167" said:Conditions are no longer damage over time (in all game modes, but especially in wvw and pvp).

The mechanic of "condi cleanse" has basically been totally outpaced by power creep and just how quickly and how many conditions a lot of these overperforming classes can stack up on you. The damage is now basically just power burst now, just applied condi = death. Resistance is basically the only thing that can save you if you get hit by a condi bomb, which back in the day was relatively easy to do. Nowadays its just a joke. And the fact that there is no defensive stat to negate condition damage is laughable when you really look at how much the condi's hit for.

I just had a condi mirage just murder me. Like straight up, I could not touch him, he toyed with me by jaunting around every time I got close, invising when I got close, confusing me with clones for a split second then he was gone again, sword leap away when I got close again. Then he shatter me, all I hear is poof poof poof no cast time no animation just 30 different conditions on me then I go down.

I honestly think it is time to reduce condition damage (a lot of people have been asking for a flat damage nerf accross the board but I worry what this will do to core specs). Either nerf condition damage by 15% in wvw and spvp and go from there, OR nerf mirage and scourge condition application RATE or DAMAGE. These two classes have far too many conditions far too easily. And when you look at other condi builds that have become absolutely obsolete such as burn warrior or guardian that has like 2 damaging conditions only at 1/5th the application, it really makes me wonder what Anet is thinking.

Please. I honestly don't think it is justifiable at all. In open world or raids, who cares. But the players on the receiving end of this joke are becoming fed up. Honestly, how can a mirage (who is one of the most mobile, evasive, pseudo tanky classes in the game mind you) do that much damage? And how can it be that if a scourge touches you catch every disease under the sun?

Either slow down the damage conditions do (like DOUBLE the time it takes to deal damage so I can actually react instead of having to blow everything to survive) or lower condition damage. PLEASE.

Kill clones. Cleanse or dont attack when confu is up. Dont get confused by clones (lol). Play a duelling class if u want to duel. 30 different condis ?Scourge ????

@babazhook.6805 said:

@enkidu.5937 said:

@"WraithOfStealth.1624" said:Aside from specific classes being overtuned or not, if you want to tone down condition damage or application rate across the board, you really have to take into account how this will affect

every other

condition build. Reading the post i can tell that there is not much of a problem with most other condi builds, so i'm a bit confused as to why this would require a global nerf to conditions.I wonder if we could get a compromise between the two extremes: stacking in duration (as it was in the first years), and intensity (as it is now). Maybe cap fire and confusion stacks at 10 max., and let every additional application of fire / confusion increase duration.

To be completely honest, it has less to do with the damage or dying to it but rather it has to do with how frequently this damage can be done or reapplied.

Take for instance Warrior and Eviscerate. Eviscerate can hit for 10k up to 14k (sometimes more but these are the numbers I see with mara/zerk gear). Eviscerate only does this kind of damage if the Warrior has 3 full bars of Adrenaline, at least 10+ stacks of Might, plus Swiftness (damage bonus of 3% from Warrior's Sprint), Peak Performance (20% damage increase for 6 sec after Physical skill is used aka Bull's Charge), and we assume Burst Mastery is traited. Also keeping in mind that it has a very telegraphed animation, the hit only applying after the full, very short distance leap is performed. If you miss (blind), it is blocked, invuln'd, interrupted, or evaded you lose all of that adrenaline and it goes onto at least a 6 and a half second cooldown not counting needing to build 3 bars of adrenaline again plus setting everything else up.

Another example could be Core Guardian. Yes it can deal out a significant chunk of burst in a very short amount of time, but this all requires timing and actually landing a chain of skills. This is typically done with its burst combo of "Shield of Wrath (wait for duration to tick lower) > Weapon swap > Mighty Blow > Judge's Intervention (used near the end of Mighty Blow animation) > Virtue of Justice > Smite Condition (optional). Glacial Heart also may proc during this combo. Keep in mind this is the main big damage source for Core Guardian and to pull it off essentially requires all of these skills to be off cooldown, it also requires that it not be dodged, or invuln'd, or blocked, or miss (blind), or interrupted. It is also very telegraphed because you can see them waiting for their Shield of Wrath duration to tick down before they do it.

Do you see the differences here? There are no big telegraphs to all of this condition output from some of these classes with condi heavy builds. Mirages near constantly just have their illusions/clones/phantasms active because Anet gave them access to having like 9 of them active at one time without really any indication that they are about to shatter their clones, not to mention scepter auto attack applying Torment alone. Yes the illusions perform an animation to depict the shatter....except they do this animation after the effect/damage already happens.

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:

@enkidu.5937 said:

@"WraithOfStealth.1624" said:Aside from specific classes being overtuned or not, if you want to tone down condition damage or application rate across the board, you really have to take into account how this will affect

every other

condition build. Reading the post i can tell that there is not much of a problem with most other condi builds, so i'm a bit confused as to why this would require a global nerf to conditions.I wonder if we could get a compromise between the two extremes: stacking in duration (as it was in the first years), and intensity (as it is now). Maybe cap fire and confusion stacks at 10 max., and let every additional application of fire / confusion increase duration.

kill clones, dodge initial phantasm attack so they wont even spawn. 3 clones is the Limit. F2 has a 21 second CD when traited. Mirage attacks can be blocked/blinded too?Mirage combo is , axe 2 , axe 2 , jaunt , axe 3 , F2, so it spent a lot of things too. Axe 2 is easy telegraphed, most mirages use dodge in between so it cant get canceled - dodge or block this. If u run away, axe 3 will never hit u. You can still dodge to block the whole Axe 3. Mirages will shatter after Axe 3 so u can mitigate the shatter "burst" too.

Plenty of ways to counter the Class, just like any other one...

Scepter has 900 range and is clunky as hell. The shatter animation is when a RANGED clone is running towards u with 10 Units/second - movespeed. Try auto it once with any power class, and your gucci.

Stay out of meele to avoid Shatters - Plenty of good Players could do this vs me - so negating my only win condition.

Did anyone of u actually died to any form of Mesmer, without their Shatters?

Vs. any good player i'm struggling to ever have 3 clones at the same time...Problem is ; bad players just dont want to kill my clones. They think they only need to damage me, so in fact they simply try to ignore my class mechanic.

Same thing as running into a Reaper when shroud is 100% and afterwards crying, because it had so much HP.

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@babazhook.6805 said:

@enkidu.5937 said:

@"WraithOfStealth.1624" said:Aside from specific classes being overtuned or not, if you want to tone down condition damage or application rate across the board, you really have to take into account how this will affect

every other

condition build. Reading the post i can tell that there is not much of a problem with most other condi builds, so i'm a bit confused as to why this would require a global nerf to conditions.I wonder if we could get a compromise between the two extremes: stacking in duration (as it was in the first years), and intensity (as it is now). Maybe cap fire and confusion stacks at 10 max., and let every additional application of fire / confusion increase duration.

Well let me put it this way. I slapped on the runes of Anti-toxin and faced off against those very same Condition mesmers that are mentioned time and time again. They could barely damage me.

Condition applications take TIME to set up as well just as those power builds need to set their comboes up but with things like swap weapon remove 3 conditions (+1 if in Anti-toxin) Conditions are EASY to remove and are easier to remove then apply . My swapping a weapon is hard to read, can not be dodged and next to impossible to prevent unlike those combinations that apply conditions. Eviscerate, once it hits does its damage in an instant and again just as you can prevent the application of an eviscerate via dodge block or blind you can do the same things to Condition attacks. The frequency with which you can hit with those big condition bombs is much less then you suggest and you do not have to dodge block or mitigate every condition attack just as you do not have to do the same to every power attack. The vast majority of builds I encounter are power builds, and there a reason for that.

I had to chime in on this, because it is players like this OP that really irk me.

People like this OP continuously push this crusade to turn condition damage into something unviable in the player vs player, w v w gamemode.

Guess what, Anet is listening to these people and giving them what they want, the death of condition damage along with more access to cleansing mechanics and a continuation of the current power creep.

Correctly place the blame where it needs to go, mesmers and stop insisting that condition dmg in general needs to be reduced.

I just want to add that it isn't purely condi damage and application that is a problem (Mirage just amplified it to newer heights).The power creep is across the board and that includes power damage.My toon with around 2800 Toughness and 25K HP can go down to a power mesmer burst combo from invis in around 1-2 seconds.And lets not forget one-shot soulbeasts or rapid fire soulbeasts still exist.

@"Xtinct.7031" said:I had to chime in on this, because it is players like this OP that really irk me.

People like this OP continuously push this crusade to turn condition damage into something unviable in the player vs player, w v w gamemode.

Guess what, Anet is listening to these people and giving them what they want, the death of condition damage along with more access to cleansing mechanics and a continuation of the current power creep.

Correctly place the blame where it needs to go, mesmers and stop insisting that condition dmg in general needs to be reduced.

^ Not all condi is bad, especially now that there are more options for condi removal and mitigation. Just a select few builds are absolutely bonkers due to some design choices(this includes power). On the topic of condi mirage, it's extremely faceroll-y and very very forgiving. I took it out for a spin one day with a budget build with essentials(Energy Sigils/adventure runes/ Mostly dire and some rabids) and did just great with little worry and effort. Here's a vid of some moments where I just trolled around and I'm not even a very good mesmer player.

I do agree that mirage needs to be taken down a peg, ive fought power mirages with more condition output and reapplication than my thief. On a much more serious note, I do believe one-shot soulbeasts are very broken indeed. I really should not die to a one-wolf pack, pointblank and rapid fire combo on a 20k hp 3200 armor class when ever a stunbreak is on CD, these is where it is at because of the anti condi power creep crusade.

@Dawdler.8521 said:Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. WIthout knowing the skill of each player and the situation of the fight, saying anything about a class is pointless.

Indeed.

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:I just want to add that it isn't purely condi damage and application that is a problem (Mirage just amplified it to newer heights).The power creep is across the board and that includes power damage.My toon with around 2800 Toughness and 25K HP can go down to a power mesmer burst combo from invis in around 1-2 seconds.And lets not forget one-shot soulbeasts or rapid fire soulbeasts still exist.

If you go down to a power mesmer from invis you are clearly a bad player.The burst of power mesmer is so telegraphed and with double dodge you remain 100% health with zero problems.Oneshot from malicious backstab from deadeye is another story, zero tells about it.When I am running a 2k armor build, zero toughness stats I couldn't find a single power mesmer who was able to oneshot me from stealth.

Soulbeast with longbow are nasty, you must use line of sight if possible.

Right now power dominates over condi, but doesn't mean condi spam is healthy and okay as it is, scourge are still the main plague of pvp and wvw when paired with firebrands.

@losingcontrol.1084 said:

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:I just want to add that it isn't purely condi damage and application that is a problem (Mirage just amplified it to newer heights).The power creep is across the board and that includes power damage.My toon with around 2800 Toughness and 25K HP can go down to a power mesmer burst combo from invis in around 1-2 seconds.And lets not forget one-shot soulbeasts or rapid fire soulbeasts still exist.

um...well...maybe I wasn't clear enough...it was a burst that came from invis...and I didn't see the mesmer approaching because he came from invis...So...the telegraph parts starts when he does it right on top of you from invis...superhuman reflexes needed here when you didn't spot him before he spots you...So...probably I need to be more aware of my surroundings and spot him before he spot me and go invis first in which case I wouldn't have known he was coming...Then in that scenario that I didn't spot him before he went invis from a distance, I would have needed superhuman reflexes to react to a burst that does 25K+ damage in 1-2 seconds from invis that I didn't see was coming...Or remain tensed and ready to react throughout my time on the map in which case I think my life would become shorter.And that same mesmer that burst me from invis did the same to Vallun the thief streamer who also happens to be a top PvPer live on his stream before.So... I don't know...I guess we are all clearly a bad player.