Hi everyone,

I wanted to start this thread because I've seen the ups and downs of condi builds since vanilla GW2, back when you couldn't stack condis other than bleed. As time has gone and condis (and cleanses) have evolved, we have run into an arms race of sorts. In one meta, condis are ridiculously OP, the next meta they're worthless, continue ad infinitum. With the powercreep introduced in HoT and PoF, these problems have become gradually worse and are unsustainable. Old condi builds have been left in the gutter, and the new ones are ridiculously powercrept.

First, Some Comparisons

Every combat style in this game has gear and counters. Some of these styles and their counters are symmetrical (IE they directly oppose each other), and sometimes they are asymmetrical (different opposition). Condition builds are no different.

So for comparison, let's look at some existing combat styles and see how they work, and how they don't.

.

Power Damage

Power damage is probably the most direct comparison, because it directly deals damage. It has some symmetrical counters and asymmetrical counters.

Symmetrical Counters

• Power damage relies on stats such as +Power, +Precision, and +Ferocity, and its opposing stats are +Toughness, +Vitality, and +Healing Power.
• Power damage can be blocked, evaded, blinded, and temporary invuln'd against (Endure Pain, Elixir S, etc)

Asymmetrical Counters

• Incoming power damage can be reduced via traits that reduce total % of damage per certain criteria. For example, Iron blooded reduces Power Damage by 2% per boon.
• Incoming power damage can be reduced via weakness on the attacker, which reduces damage output and crit chance significantly.
• Incoming power damage can be reduced via boons on the defender, such as protection (and indirectly via retaliation)

Overall, while power damage has experienced heavy powercreep over the last two expansions, it has maintained a relatively healthy interaction with the game mechanics and is one of the most reliable ways to output consistent damage.

.

Crowd Control (CC)

Crowd Control deals some damage in the hits, but its primary source of damage comes from the follow up, often from teammates or the player character. Crowd control not only includes knockdowns, stuns, dazes, pushes/pulls, but also includes certain conditions that debilitate the foe in some way.

Symmetrical Counters

• Stability directly counteracts any non-condition CC
• Stunbreakers cancel the effects of non-condition CC
• Normal cleanses are direct counters to condition CC's because there is a 1:1 ratio of the condition to the cleanse
• Blocks, blinds, temporary invulns, and evades also work against CC's.

Asymmetrical Counters

• Certain gear choices and traits can increase the effects of certain outgoing CC's, and and other gear choices and traits can decrease most CC's.
• Certain traits can cleanse or reduce the duration of specific condition CC's, such as Daredevil's Unhindered Combatant.
• Some skills (such as Overcharged Shot) also cleanse specific condition CC's.

Crowd control sometimes verges on being excessive, and other times too weak. In its current implementation, it's generally balanced in uncoordinated teams, but can be absurdly oppressive with teams that are coordinating well. Some specs (like holo) deal very high levels of CC, and some specs have greater defenses against CC. That said, its system is fundamentally balanced, it's mainly about tuning it properly to not lean too far in one direction or the other.

Condi Damage: The Problem

And now we arrive at condi damage, the main point of today's wall-o-text. As you can see in our previous examples, power damage and crowd control feature both symmetrical and asymmetrical counters. The problem with condition damage is that its primary counter (cleansing) is almost entirely asymmetrical, and this results in a ridiculous arms race.

Symmetrical Counters

• Evades, blocks, blinds, and temp invulns can stop the initial application of conditions, just like every other combat style.

Asymmetrical Counters

• Condition damage gear (+Condi Damage, +Expertise) has no direct counter gearwise. The closest are +Vitality and +Healing Power, but these aren't quite direct counters, just stalling mechanisms.
• Specific condition damage durations and damage can be increased with certain gear and traits, but most of the gear and traits that reduce condition duration and damage apply to all conditions equally, including the CC conditions.
• Edit: Some helpful people pointed out that resistance is an asymmetrical counter to condi damage, rendering you entirely immune to all conditions, including CC conditions.
• Condition damage is applied one condition at a time, but cleansing removes the entire stack of the same condition all at once. This means that a single cleanse is significantly more powerful than a large number of a single condition. Conditions are also cleansed in a specific order in your bar: From left to right, regardless of the importance of the condition.

This last point is the most important aspect of the whole problem: Builds that primarily feature only one condition are incredibly weak against decent cleansing capabilities. They become laughably bad against heavy cleansing builds such as prot holo. There are only two solutions to this problem:

• A wide spread of conditions applied that act as "cover conditions" to protect the more dangerous conditions from being cleansed on your opponent. See Scourge or condi thief for examples of this.
• Frequent reapplication of conditions applied. See burn guardian or condi mirage for examples of this.

Any condi build that does not feature frequent reapplication or a wide spread of conditions is thus left out of the entire meta. And this all stems because of that one little asymmetry between how conditions are applied, and how they are cleansed.

What can be done?

A bunch of work needs to be done to bring condition damage and condition cleansing into line with the symmetries of power damage and CC:

1. Number and diversity of conditions applied by certain specs need to be reduced overall, and durations increased. Classes and specs should only be able to deal a certain number of different conditions with any regularity. You could structure this by class, or structure it by spec.
2. Condition reapplication rates should be slowed in certain specs.
3. Cleansing's fundamental mechanic needs to be changed so that it doesn't cleanse the entire stack at once. It could cleanse a certain number of a given stack, reduce the duration of existing stacks by a certain amount or % of time, or only cleanse specific conditions.
4. Overall cleansing capabilities need to be reduced in certain classes. As much as I love playing protection holo, Anticorrosion Plating is stupidly powerful against condition builds. Firebrand, Tempest, and certain other specs are also very good at cleansing on short notice. Every cleanse should be valuable, and not easy to toss around like they are now.
5. Certain conditions should have lower caps on how much they can stack in a given period of time. Burning is one such condition -- stacks of over 10 burning are no longer "Damage over time," they are spike builds, which does not fall in line with ArenaNet's stated vision for condition damage.
6. Conditions that synergize with each other generally shouldn't be found on the same class or build. One of the biggest offenders of this was Condi Mirage, which would apply confusion and agony so that you couldn't do anything without hurting yourself, nor could you move without hurting yourself. Scourge was another big offender with cripple, blind, and weakness.

These ideas sound simple in theory, but will require significant dev work to sort out. Unfortunately, as a system, condition damage and its counters are simply failing. We almost always end up with condition damage being too extreme, or too weak. It's extremely rare to find a particularly balanced set of condition builds, and many older condition builds have simply been shut out of competitive game modes.

I find anti corrosion plating is useful against the single stack conditions. It is not great against serious condition appliers who are built for that. you're not going to be able to toe to toe a necro well, you can't mitigate boon corruption effectively enough and in group skirmish its hard overwhelmed. What it stops is the gank burn with no covering condition, and it requires protection to be used to do it. To get protection in holo mode you'll be forced to use up a hard light arena which is great if its not on its 45 second cool down. This means a holo will have to come out of holo and activate shield or burn a heal in holo mode typically to remove a condition.

Also note that you need a build with a heavy focus on condition mitigation, and your probably picking turret and supporting cleanse sigils to do it. So essentially you spec'd into a specific counter that can still be overwhelmed by a necrosis sheer condi apply if your not careful.

I guess the problem with Condi is no-one likes protracted uselessness. IF you get hit with an 18k three round burst and instantly keel over, then it sucks but it's over. Watching yourself run around in a circle for five seconds knowing there's nothing you can do because your one cleanse cooldown ain't coming back is more annoying in play. Just protracted inevitability. Being simply unable to do anything at all from stun lock is frustrating as hell to be stuck by and particularly painful to new entrants. Being a mele and unable to approach someone for protracted periods also not fun play. In general many of the conditions cause an effect on the player which makes them not able to interact and puts them "out of the game" while still in it.

@shion.2084 said:I find anti corrosion plating is useful against the single stack conditions. It is not great against serious condition appliers who are built for that. you're not going to be able to toe to toe a necro well, you can't mitigate boon corruption effectively enough and in group skirmish its hard overwhelmed. What it stops is the gank burn with no covering condition, and it requires protection to be used to do it. To get protection in holo mode you'll be forced to use up a hard light arena which is great if its not on its 45 second cool down. This means a holo will have to come out of holo and activate shield or burn a heal in holo mode typically to remove a condition.

Uhh... Anti corrosion plating and HLA can cleanse up to 12 conditions if you're at >50% heat, 8 conditions if you're below 50% heat. Reconstruction field is 6 cleanses with Anti corrosion plating I think. And that's not including all the potential synergy with overshield or thumper turret, nor blasting light fields.

@"Vagrant.7206" said:

• Condition damage is applied one condition at a time, but cleansing removes the entire stack of the same condition all at once. This means that a single cleanse is significantly more powerful than a large number of a single condition. Conditions are also cleansed in a specific order in your bar: From left to right, regardless of the importance of the condition.

This last point is the most important aspect of the whole problem: Builds that primarily feature only one condition are incredibly weak against decent cleansing capabilities. They become laughably bad against heavy cleansing builds such as prot holo. There are only two solutions to this problem:

• A wide spread of conditions applied that act as "cover conditions" to protect the more dangerous conditions from being cleansed on your opponent. See Scourge or condi thief for examples of this.
• Frequent reapplication of conditions applied. See burn guardian or condi mirage for examples of this.

Any condi build that does not feature frequent reapplication or a wide spread of conditions is thus left out of the entire meta. And this all stems because of that one little asymmetry between how conditions are applied, and how they are cleansed.

---

What can be done?

A bunch of work needs to be done to bring condition damage and condition cleansing into line with the symmetries of power damage and CC:

1. Number and diversity of conditions applied by certain specs need to be reduced overall, and durations increased. Classes and specs should only be able to deal a certain number of different conditions with any regularity. You could structure this by class, or structure it by spec.
2. Condition reapplication rates should be slowed in certain specs.
3. Cleansing's fundamental mechanic needs to be changed so that it doesn't cleanse the entire stack at once. It could cleanse a certain number of a given stack, reduce the duration of existing stacks by a certain amount or % of time, or only cleanse specific conditions.
4. Overall cleansing capabilities need to be reduced in certain classes. As much as I love playing protection holo, Anticorrosion Plating is stupidly powerful against condition builds. Firebrand, Tempest, and certain other specs are also very good at cleansing on short notice. Every cleanse should be valuable, and not easy to toss around like they are now.
5. Certain conditions should have lower caps on how much they can stack in a given period of time. Burning is one such condition -- stacks of over 10 burning are no longer "Damage over time," they are spike builds, which does not fall in line with ArenaNet's stated vision for condition damage.
6. Conditions that synergize with each other generally shouldn't be found on the same class or build. One of the biggest offenders of this was Condi Mirage, which would apply confusion and agony so that you couldn't do anything without hurting yourself, nor could you move without hurting yourself. Scourge was another big offender with cripple, blind, and weakness.

These ideas sound simple in theory, but will require significant dev work to sort out. Unfortunately, as a system, condition damage and its counters are simply failing. We almost always end up with condition damage being too extreme, or too weak. It's extremely rare to find a particularly balanced set of condition builds, and many older condition builds have simply been shut out of competitive game modes.

Quoting for truth, and also to add a few things:

• In addition to heavy personal cleanse on many builds, some also pack significant team cleansing which remove/convert conditions from everyone around them as well. This is especially noticeable in any fight with more than 3 or 4 players in close proximity, and it's very difficult to play around for the condi player. You may be able to read your opponent's cleanses and time your damaging + cover conditions correctly to land when their cleanse is down, but it's impossible to do this AND also account for the support tempest or firebrand or scrapper next to them cleansing a condition every 1-2 seconds.
• My suggestion is to tie damaging condition removal to heal skills, since these are on fairly consistent cooldowns across classes (~15-30s), then balance condition damage around that window.

At present, condition builds are just a ton of work, and not a lot of payoff. Why bother attempting to stick a melee-range blowtorch that will tick for ~2k/s and be cleansed after a few ticks when you can hit them for 10x that with a holo power burst near-instantly?

Why bother getting in melee range and hitting someone with a ranger trap condi bomb and racking up conditions with a close-range shortbow if they're just going to cleanse it all and counterattack. Instead you could be hitting them with a 40k rapid fire combo (unblockable, from 1800+ range) in under 2s, followed up with 7k+ autoattacks.

etc.

An aspect that you have not addressed, and which I think is the biggest reason people always hate conditions, is the way they get applied.

Now, I am generalising here, but conditions tend to come from 100s of small hits, rather than a single big hit. Condition builds often seem to rely on either laying down a load of pulsing fields or AI, and then just waiting for damage to accrue, or else rely on on-hit/on-crit applications to stack up based on hitting the enemy 100s of times.

Compare this to, say, a warrior coming at you with an axe, or a hammer-guardian, or a fresh-air ele, or...... etc. In these cases it is very obvious to the player that "in order to win, I must dodge/mitigate these 2-3 skills". There is a tactical game of move and counter-move, where the warrior is trying to set-up an eviscerate, and their opponent is trying to anticipate and dodge it. And if their opponent fails, it is quite obvious to them why they have failed, and they can learn from it, plan better for next time, etc.

Whereas against condi builds, both of you flail around in pulsing fields, pew-pewing with chip attacks to apply on-hit effects, and then eventually one of you dies, with no real indication of what you did wrong, what you should have dodged. With no clear explanation, and no ability to learn from this and plan better for next time, the player will conclude that the condi build is just "overpowered" or "cheese", and that's that.

IMO re-thinking how conditions are applied will go a long way to making them acceptable to people.

Conditions have a lot of problems. For example there are 2 types of condition CC - fear and taunt. Stability protects from them as well as from the rest of the CC. Why do you need resistance when there is Stability and rabid condi cleansing. If go in that direction It is necessary to remove the possibility of stability to protect against condi CC.

@"Ragnar.4257" said:An aspect that you have not addressed, and which I think is the biggest reason people always hate conditions, is the way they get applied.

Now, I am generalising here, but conditions tend to come from 100s of small hits, rather than a single big hit. Condition builds often seem to rely on either laying down a load of pulsing fields or AI, and then just waiting for damage to accrue, or else rely on on-hit/on-crit applications to stack up based on hitting the enemy 100s of times.

Compare this to, say, a warrior coming at you with an axe, or a hammer-guardian, or a fresh-air ele, or...... etc. In these cases it is very obvious to the player that "in order to win, I must dodge/mitigate these 2-3 skills". There is a tactical game of move and counter-move, where the warrior is trying to set-up an eviscerate, and their opponent is trying to anticipate and dodge it. And if their opponent fails, it is quite obvious to them why they have failed, and they can learn from it, plan better for next time, etc.

Whereas against condi builds, both of you flail around in pulsing fields, pew-pewing with chip attacks to apply on-hit effects, and then eventually one of you dies, with no real indication of what you did wrong, what you should have dodged. With no clear explanation, and no ability to learn from this and plan better for next time, the player will conclude that the condi build is just "overpowered" or "cheese", and that's that.

IMO re-thinking how conditions are applied will go a long way to making them acceptable to people.

i think he does adress exactly that.he said condition builds to be viable are able to constantly reapply conditions or cover conditions wich is also a constant reapplication of conditions.by nerfing cleanses alot, one can put the bulk of condi pressure in fewer, telegraphed skills to have more counterplay.but so far condis have not been a reliable source of damage unless it was possible to apply it much faster than it could be cleansed or in so high stacks that they would burst.

what he did miss however is resistance, this boon is IMO a bandaid fix that is just way too strong in some cases. to make condition damage more reliable, one would also limit resistance to non damaging conditions, basically like a stability for debilitating condis.

You forgot resistance and how it renders all conditions obsolete. This used to be more rare however it's becoming more and more common on builds through runes and boon duplication while some classes can also share it around.

Additionally while you mention expertise (condition duration increase) stats have no counter play other than cleansing likewise the same is true of boons and removal is much rarer to get. This creates more problems than expertise ever will due to how strong boons are.

You seem to think that the problem with conditions is mechanical and that it's somehow different to problems with power damage. They're actually both symptoms of the same problems. The problem is cool downs have systematically been going down expansion upon expansion across the board while skills have (especially with expansion weapons) become more overbloated or simply overpowered.

I keep saying how the powercreep is warping the game and this is a perfect example, we've had offensive power creep (power and condi) to make sure bunker meta NEVER happens again after the pro league S1 clownfiesta, this was done by lower cool downs and higher damage mods on skills. These lower cool downs had to be met by lower cool downs on active defences like blocks, blinds, invulns etc (your symmetrical counters) to address the "burst meta" as it often gets called when it happens.

So why does this specifically warp conditions? Get to the point already Apharma!

OK so one of the power creeps was adding more conditions both on power and condition builds. You have control conditions (chill, cripple, immob, taunt and fear) which became more common on some classes and farted out like candy. Then you have damage conditions and their hybrids (bleeds, burn, torment, confusion and poison) that were added to elite specs as a way of giving them something new (scourge good example) or in other cases stacking even more of these to dumb levels. Then you have defensive conditions (blind, weakness and slow) which also increased, especially weakness on some classes. What this meant is we needed more cleanses to keep up with the amount of conditions being thrown around in general irrespective of if they were doing damage or not.

This all adds up to a double whammy of defensive buffs vs condition builds specifically. Then you factor in how innately taxing fighting condition builds are because you have to watch the buff bar and you have a mix where the builds are screamed bloody murder by most because they don't like fighting them while stomping poorer players and in order to be good at a higher level they have to be massively stacked in damage and application to overwhelm all the defensive options.

This then leads to thinking conditions are mechanically at fault. Maybe at this pace and power creep level they might be but they weren't before the expansions when conditions and cleanses weren't given out like candy. Additionally I haven't seen any viable replacements for this system and btw the same is true of boons and those have been running rampant warping class balance since HoT especially the easy access to quickness and stacking of might making classes vary substantially from OMFGWTFHELICOPTER levels of damage to "oh it's kinda balanced".

TLDR: The power creep is warping the game, the power creep needs addressing before you look at the mechanics in most cases.

By the way the problem with your suggestions is it will make watching the UI and which cleanses you use needed to a higher level currently required which is already too much for most of GW2 playerbase even in plat 2/3. Point 6 was valid, though I've been saying that since 2015.

I think problems arrive in droves when people try to reinvent the wheel every time it goes flat. some buffs to some condi builds would be good. some other cleanses could be toned down. no need to go all out, because as you've laid out already it doesn't really go well. incremental changes, not a tidal wave.

@MUDse.7623 said:

@"Ragnar.4257" said:An aspect that you have not addressed, and which I think is the biggest reason people always hate conditions, is the way they get applied.

Now, I am generalising here, but conditions tend to come from 100s of small hits, rather than a single big hit. Condition builds often seem to rely on either laying down a load of pulsing fields or AI, and then just waiting for damage to accrue, or else rely on on-hit/on-crit applications to stack up based on hitting the enemy 100s of times.

Compare this to, say, a warrior coming at you with an axe, or a hammer-guardian, or a fresh-air ele, or...... etc. In these cases it is very obvious to the player that "in order to win, I must dodge/mitigate these 2-3 skills". There is a tactical game of move and counter-move, where the warrior is trying to set-up an eviscerate, and their opponent is trying to anticipate and dodge it. And if their opponent fails, it is quite obvious to them why they have failed, and they can learn from it, plan better for next time, etc.

Whereas against condi builds, both of you flail around in pulsing fields, pew-pewing with chip attacks to apply on-hit effects, and then eventually one of you dies, with no real indication of what you did wrong, what you should have dodged. With no clear explanation, and no ability to learn from this and plan better for next time, the player will conclude that the condi build is just "overpowered" or "cheese", and that's that.

IMO re-thinking how conditions are applied will go a long way to making them acceptable to people.

No, its not the same thing. Similar, but different. I wasn't really talking about the effectiveness of conditions, more about why people always hate playing against condi.

Condi builds have always been despised, since launch, it is not a new feature with expansions or power-creep or w/e.

My point applies just as much to core p/x engineer or shortbow ranger as it does mirage or scourge. Shortbow ranger applies its damage by going 11111111111, racking up bleed stacks, and utilising on-crit traits and sharpening stones. There is nothing to telegraph here, and nothing really to counter-play. All you can do is basically ignore the 11111111 and go for the kill before the ranger kills you. With condi-engi, aside from blowtorch there's really nothing you "need" to dodge, but the sum total of all pistol skills + bombs + grenades can grind you down; luckily condi-engi has no sustain and its therefore trivial to kill it before it kills you.

The fact that core condi ranger and engi are not viable and have been power-creeped out by an overload of cleanses and resistance, is not relevant to the point. Even if we buffed/nerfed stuff around them to make them viable, they still wouldn't be enjoyable to play against.

Please try and separate out in your mind the condition(s) themselves and the method of delivery. Necromancer axe #2 and Gravedigger deal comparable power damage, but the method of delivery is totally different. There aren't really any power builds that are based on pulsing AoE fields, or on setting up pets/summons, or on stacking on-hit/on-crit effects. But they're the main themes of basically all condi-builds, regardless of whether they are meta or not. And people really don't like them, because they are seen as "passive" gameplay.

A mesmer playing power-greatsword has clear plays and counter-plays. There is a definitive 'focus' to the damage, either dodge it, or don't, and people enjoy the adrenaline rush of playing that game. A condi-mesmer dancing around doing his disco butterfly light-show with half a dozen clones and phantasms, hitting 10 times per second, with none of those hits actually hurting much, but the sum-total hurting alot, is just not enjoyable to play against, regardless of whether it is 'OP' or not.

A guardian playing power-hammer has clear plays and counter-players. There is a definitive 'focus' to the damage, either dodge it, or don't. A burn-guardian racking up burn-stacks with on-hit VoJ procs and passive-traited procs of Zealots Flame, doesn't really have any plays or counter-plays. Don't get hit by it? Okay, counter-play is to not play. Very engaging.

Now why is this relevant to this thread? Why is fun vs not fun relevant to a discussion on viable vs not viable? Because you're going to have a very tough time selling your "make condi viable" if people still hate playing against condi builds. That's why. Condi-thief isn't viable, it only really has 2 conditions, people still hate it. Re-adjusting cleanses to make condi-thief viable isn't going to solve anything, when people still hate the method of delivery that condi thief has.

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:I think problems arrive in droves when people try to reinvent the wheel every time it goes flat. some buffs to some condi builds would be good. some other cleanses could be toned down. no need to go all out, because as you've laid out already it doesn't really go well. incremental changes, not a tidal wave.

This is a good assessment. Honestly, I think most of the mega condi change to longer duration with less intensity.

There are things however that need a tidal wave, like health pool.

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:An aspect that you have not addressed, and which I think is the biggest reason people always hate conditions, is the way they get applied.

Now, I am generalising here, but conditions tend to come from 100s of small hits, rather than a single big hit. Condition builds often seem to rely on either laying down a load of pulsing fields or AI, and then just waiting for damage to accrue, or else rely on on-hit/on-crit applications to stack up based on hitting the enemy 100s of times.

Compare this to, say, a warrior coming at you with an axe, or a hammer-guardian, or a fresh-air ele, or...... etc. In these cases it is very obvious to the player that "in order to win, I must dodge/mitigate these 2-3 skills". There is a tactical game of move and counter-move, where the warrior is trying to set-up an eviscerate, and their opponent is trying to anticipate and dodge it. And if their opponent fails, it is quite obvious to them why they have failed, and they can learn from it, plan better for next time, etc.

Whereas against condi builds, both of you flail around in pulsing fields, pew-pewing with chip attacks to apply on-hit effects, and then eventually one of you dies, with no real indication of what you did wrong, what you should have dodged. With no clear explanation, and no ability to learn from this and plan better for next time, the player will conclude that the condi build is just "overpowered" or "cheese", and that's that.

IMO re-thinking how conditions are applied will go a long way to making them acceptable to people.

indeed he didnt base his post on fun, wich seems to be your focal point. but you still could argue for your point about viable and not viable using the OPs method.

the main thing you point out why condition builds are not fun is that they spamm those conditions on basically anything, instead of applying it on a few key skills wich makes the active defenses to avoid the application worse, it also takes away the reward (fun) for using said active defenses to successfully avoiding a bulk of pressure, the fun is further diminished by strong cleanses making condition applications trivial at times. therefor the application method for condis is asymmetrical to active defenses to avoid the application, if you compare that to power damage.

however this point while important, is to remain like this as long as conditions are an unreliable source of damage. if you balance application to active defenses, then you dont need any condition cleanse for damaging conditions at all, as the counter to condi cleanse is condi spamm, wich is as you rightly point out: not fun.

xxxxxxxxxx

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:An aspect that you have not addressed, and which I think is the biggest reason people always hate conditions, is the way they get applied.

Now, I am generalising here, but conditions tend to come from 100s of small hits, rather than a single big hit. Condition builds often seem to rely on either laying down a load of pulsing fields or AI, and then just waiting for damage to accrue, or else rely on on-hit/on-crit applications to stack up based on hitting the enemy 100s of times.

Compare this to, say, a warrior coming at you with an axe, or a hammer-guardian, or a fresh-air ele, or...... etc. In these cases it is very obvious to the player that "in order to win, I must dodge/mitigate these 2-3 skills". There is a tactical game of move and counter-move, where the warrior is trying to set-up an eviscerate, and their opponent is trying to anticipate and dodge it. And if their opponent fails, it is quite obvious to them why they have failed, and they can learn from it, plan better for next time, etc.

Whereas against condi builds, both of you flail around in pulsing fields, pew-pewing with chip attacks to apply on-hit effects, and then eventually one of you dies, with no real indication of what you did wrong, what you should have dodged. With no clear explanation, and no ability to learn from this and plan better for next time, the player will conclude that the condi build is just "overpowered" or "cheese", and that's that.

IMO re-thinking how conditions are applied will go a long way to making them acceptable to people.

This is not entirely accurate. It's really only Mirages that combined Deceptive Evasion with Infinite Horizon that just had way too many individual packets of damage. Infinite Horizon draws out how many packets of damage you have to avoid, and Deceptive Evasion spawns clones doing their ambush attacks automatically which is just too much value on a dodge.

Illusions and shatter variants approached combat mostly the same way as power mesmers. Shatters are your big damage, phantasms are solid medium tier damage. Most stuff after that is chip damage. And shatter variants got hit the absolute hardest last patch.

@MUDse.7623 said:

@"Ragnar.4257" said:An aspect that you have not addressed, and which I think is the biggest reason people always hate conditions, is the way they get applied.

Now, I am generalising here, but conditions tend to come from 100s of small hits, rather than a single big hit. Condition builds often seem to rely on either laying down a load of pulsing fields or AI, and then just waiting for damage to accrue, or else rely on on-hit/on-crit applications to stack up based on hitting the enemy 100s of times.

Compare this to, say, a warrior coming at you with an axe, or a hammer-guardian, or a fresh-air ele, or...... etc. In these cases it is very obvious to the player that "in order to win, I must dodge/mitigate these 2-3 skills". There is a tactical game of move and counter-move, where the warrior is trying to set-up an eviscerate, and their opponent is trying to anticipate and dodge it. And if their opponent fails, it is quite obvious to them why they have failed, and they can learn from it, plan better for next time, etc.

Whereas against condi builds, both of you flail around in pulsing fields, pew-pewing with chip attacks to apply on-hit effects, and then eventually one of you dies, with no real indication of what you did wrong, what you should have dodged. With no clear explanation, and no ability to learn from this and plan better for next time, the player will conclude that the condi build is just "overpowered" or "cheese", and that's that.

IMO re-thinking how conditions are applied will go a long way to making them acceptable to people.what he did miss however is resistance, this boon is IMO a bandaid fix that is just way too strong in some cases. to make condition damage more reliable, one would also limit resistance to non damaging conditions, basically like a stability for debilitating condis.

Good catch, I forgot about resistance. Put it in the OP.

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:I think problems arrive in droves when people try to reinvent the wheel every time it goes flat. some buffs to some condi builds would be good. some other cleanses could be toned down. no need to go all out, because as you've laid out already it doesn't really go well. incremental changes, not a tidal wave.

It's not necessarily trying to reinvent the wheel. It's comparing condi to its closest analogues and recognizing that powercreep has really made a fundamental flaw much, much worse. As @apharma.3741 pointed out, without powercreep this problem wouldn't be particularly apparent, because it was all much more toned down in the past. I agree that powercreep has definitely made the problem more obvious, but I'm not sure if we could scale back the powercreep, because that's an even bigger problem to tackle.

@"Ragnar.4257" said:An aspect that you have not addressed, and which I think is the biggest reason people always hate conditions, is the way they get applied.

Now, I am generalising here, but conditions tend to come from 100s of small hits, rather than a single big hit. Condition builds often seem to rely on either laying down a load of pulsing fields or AI, and then just waiting for damage to accrue, or else rely on on-hit/on-crit applications to stack up based on hitting the enemy 100s of times.

Compare this to, say, a warrior coming at you with an axe, or a hammer-guardian, or a fresh-air ele, or...... etc. In these cases it is very obvious to the player that "in order to win, I must dodge/mitigate these 2-3 skills". There is a tactical game of move and counter-move, where the warrior is trying to set-up an eviscerate, and their opponent is trying to anticipate and dodge it. And if their opponent fails, it is quite obvious to them why they have failed, and they can learn from it, plan better for next time, etc.

Whereas against condi builds, both of you flail around in pulsing fields, pew-pewing with chip attacks to apply on-hit effects, and then eventually one of you dies, with no real indication of what you did wrong, what you should have dodged. With no clear explanation, and no ability to learn from this and plan better for next time, the player will conclude that the condi build is just "overpowered" or "cheese", and that's that.

IMO re-thinking how conditions are applied will go a long way to making them acceptable to people.

This. It's why Condi mirage was so annoying. You have to look at the animations but at the same time find the correct 1 while the other guy can detarget, invis, port back and forth and invur.

Through the massive visual clutter. Half the time u don't know what you are looking for at.

I much rather have Condi thief as a thing. Because at least you can see it and dodge.

But considering the recent Nerf. I think it seems pretty balanced. You still have mesmers that win node but at the same time there isn't 4 every game anymore

With the recent scrap Nerf. I feel like everything is ok. Just time to buff things like renegade.

@TorQ.7041 said:

@"Ragnar.4257" said:An aspect that you have not addressed, and which I think is the biggest reason people always hate conditions, is the way they get applied.

Now, I am generalising here, but conditions tend to come from 100s of small hits, rather than a single big hit. Condition builds often seem to rely on either laying down a load of pulsing fields or AI, and then just waiting for damage to accrue, or else rely on on-hit/on-crit applications to stack up based on hitting the enemy 100s of times.

Compare this to, say, a warrior coming at you with an axe, or a hammer-guardian, or a fresh-air ele, or...... etc. In these cases it is very obvious to the player that "in order to win, I must dodge/mitigate these 2-3 skills". There is a tactical game of move and counter-move, where the warrior is trying to set-up an eviscerate, and their opponent is trying to anticipate and dodge it. And if their opponent fails, it is quite obvious to them why they have failed, and they can learn from it, plan better for next time, etc.

Whereas against condi builds, both of you flail around in pulsing fields, pew-pewing with chip attacks to apply on-hit effects, and then eventually one of you dies, with no real indication of what you did wrong, what you should have dodged. With no clear explanation, and no ability to learn from this and plan better for next time, the player will conclude that the condi build is just "overpowered" or "cheese", and that's that.

IMO re-thinking how conditions are applied will go a long way to making them acceptable to people.

This isn't about mesmer. I would consider condi-thief to be just as obnoxious in its method of delivery, which is all insta-cast teleports and pulsing AoE fields. It just so happens that condi-thief can't keep up in the current meta while mirage can, but that's a separate point.

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:

@"Ragnar.4257" said:An aspect that you have not addressed, and which I think is the biggest reason people always hate conditions, is the way they get applied.

Now, I am generalising here, but conditions tend to come from 100s of small hits, rather than a single big hit. Condition builds often seem to rely on either laying down a load of pulsing fields or AI, and then just waiting for damage to accrue, or else rely on on-hit/on-crit applications to stack up based on hitting the enemy 100s of times.

Compare this to, say, a warrior coming at you with an axe, or a hammer-guardian, or a fresh-air ele, or...... etc. In these cases it is very obvious to the player that "in order to win, I must dodge/mitigate these 2-3 skills". There is a tactical game of move and counter-move, where the warrior is trying to set-up an eviscerate, and their opponent is trying to anticipate and dodge it. And if their opponent fails, it is quite obvious to them why they have failed, and they can learn from it, plan better for next time, etc.

Whereas against condi builds, both of you flail around in pulsing fields, pew-pewing with chip attacks to apply on-hit effects, and then eventually one of you dies, with no real indication of what you did wrong, what you should have dodged. With no clear explanation, and no ability to learn from this and plan better for next time, the player will conclude that the condi build is just "overpowered" or "cheese", and that's that.

IMO re-thinking how conditions are applied will go a long way to making them acceptable to people.what he did miss however is resistance, this boon is IMO a bandaid fix that is just way too strong in some cases. to make condition damage more reliable, one would also limit resistance to non damaging conditions, basically like a stability for debilitating condis.

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:I think problems arrive in droves when people try to reinvent the wheel every time it goes flat. some buffs to some condi builds would be good. some other cleanses could be toned down. no need to go all out, because as you've laid out already it doesn't really go well. incremental changes, not a tidal wave.

Scaling back the power creep is a bigger problem than?

Redesigning boons as they're out of control.Redesigning conditions as they're spammed.Redesigning cleanses and balancing them with above conditions changes.Redesigning CC and stability as both are out of control.Redesigning half the skills in the game because they're now too strong or too weak.Redesigning skills that have mechanically been made too strong, weak or non functional due to creep.Redesigning and revamping repeatable endgame content as it becomes easier.Shrugging incessantly at WvW because who knows how to deal with that mess without dealing with power creep.

People who make the claim of it's too much work to deal with the power creep are either ignorant of just how much it's warped the game or haven't actually thought about how much work is needed for the alternative strategy. Many of the veterans have left because the barrier to entry is so even simple bots can get to high ranks in PvP, the skill aspect is gone, the combo fields/finishers system is largely obsolete etc.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:An aspect that you have not addressed, and which I think is the biggest reason people always hate conditions, is the way they get applied.

Now, I am generalising here, but conditions tend to come from 100s of small hits, rather than a single big hit. Condition builds often seem to rely on either laying down a load of pulsing fields or AI, and then just waiting for damage to accrue, or else rely on on-hit/on-crit applications to stack up based on hitting the enemy 100s of times.

Compare this to, say, a warrior coming at you with an axe, or a hammer-guardian, or a fresh-air ele, or...... etc. In these cases it is very obvious to the player that "in order to win, I must dodge/mitigate these 2-3 skills". There is a tactical game of move and counter-move, where the warrior is trying to set-up an eviscerate, and their opponent is trying to anticipate and dodge it. And if their opponent fails, it is quite obvious to them why they have failed, and they can learn from it, plan better for next time, etc.

Whereas against condi builds, both of you flail around in pulsing fields, pew-pewing with chip attacks to apply on-hit effects, and then eventually one of you dies, with no real indication of what you did wrong, what you should have dodged. With no clear explanation, and no ability to learn from this and plan better for next time, the player will conclude that the condi build is just "overpowered" or "cheese", and that's that.

IMO re-thinking how conditions are applied will go a long way to making them acceptable to people.

Condi mesmer weapons have generally had less must-dodge skills than power, esp due to the nature of staff. (nowadays we have scepter 3 but in the past sword was more common even on condi). Instead they rely on traits such as ineptitude, mtd, and confusion on shatter. These traits happen to trigger on every shatter, which is very different from power mesmer. Then there is sharper images which is also passive chip damage. And chaos armor procs.

We can also look at a couple of historical condi mesmer builds:Clone death mesmer - don't even have to say anything about this, it was just aids.Condi chrono - while less aids, it essentially relied on spamming clones+shatters with pre-nerf illusionary reversion. Combine with staff, and you very much get a chip-damage playstyleCondi mirage - already talked about ITT, chip damage through IH, DE, axe trait+ambush.

Conditions should never have stacked in pvp and wvw. Resistance was added in the same patch as condition stacking (June 2015) to counteract the high damage some builds could do. So basically they added a problem and a bandaid solution for the problem in one patch. Go figure!

Ever since then the balance of the game slowly went to shit when all we needed back then was more ways to cleanse conditions for every class and a few buffs here and there for the condition builds that were underperforming. That. Is. It.

My ideas:

• remove resistance from the game which also means reworking mallyx
• revert condition damage in pvp/wvw back to pre 2015, keep it in pve
• adjust the amount of boon application, boon strips/corrupts and cleanses in the game

Voilà, a more balanced game.

@apharma.3741 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:

@"Ragnar.4257" said:An aspect that you have not addressed, and which I think is the biggest reason people always hate conditions, is the way they get applied.

Now, I am generalising here, but conditions tend to come from 100s of small hits, rather than a single big hit. Condition builds often seem to rely on either laying down a load of pulsing fields or AI, and then just waiting for damage to accrue, or else rely on on-hit/on-crit applications to stack up based on hitting the enemy 100s of times.

Compare this to, say, a warrior coming at you with an axe, or a hammer-guardian, or a fresh-air ele, or...... etc. In these cases it is very obvious to the player that "in order to win, I must dodge/mitigate these 2-3 skills". There is a tactical game of move and counter-move, where the warrior is trying to set-up an eviscerate, and their opponent is trying to anticipate and dodge it. And if their opponent fails, it is quite obvious to them why they have failed, and they can learn from it, plan better for next time, etc.

Whereas against condi builds, both of you flail around in pulsing fields, pew-pewing with chip attacks to apply on-hit effects, and then eventually one of you dies, with no real indication of what you did wrong, what you should have dodged. With no clear explanation, and no ability to learn from this and plan better for next time, the player will conclude that the condi build is just "overpowered" or "cheese", and that's that.

IMO re-thinking how conditions are applied will go a long way to making them acceptable to people.what he did miss however is resistance, this boon is IMO a bandaid fix that is just way too strong in some cases. to make condition damage more reliable, one would also limit resistance to non damaging conditions, basically like a stability for debilitating condis.

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:I think problems arrive in droves when people try to reinvent the wheel every time it goes flat. some buffs to some condi builds would be good. some other cleanses could be toned down. no need to go all out, because as you've laid out already it doesn't really go well. incremental changes, not a tidal wave.

I'm not saying it's a big problem.

I'm saying the scale of the problem of powercreep is so huge, that it's difficult to tackle in one go without seriously messing stuff up. It's a simpler task to approach each system individually and rebalance them one-by-one. This thread was trying to outline what is wrong with the condi system and why it's always at polar extremes.

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@apharma.3741 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:

@"Ragnar.4257" said:An aspect that you have not addressed, and which I think is the biggest reason people always hate conditions, is the way they get applied.

Now, I am generalising here, but conditions tend to come from 100s of small hits, rather than a single big hit. Condition builds often seem to rely on either laying down a load of pulsing fields or AI, and then just waiting for damage to accrue, or else rely on on-hit/on-crit applications to stack up based on hitting the enemy 100s of times.

Compare this to, say, a warrior coming at you with an axe, or a hammer-guardian, or a fresh-air ele, or...... etc. In these cases it is very obvious to the player that "in order to win, I must dodge/mitigate these 2-3 skills". There is a tactical game of move and counter-move, where the warrior is trying to set-up an eviscerate, and their opponent is trying to anticipate and dodge it. And if their opponent fails, it is quite obvious to them why they have failed, and they can learn from it, plan better for next time, etc.

Whereas against condi builds, both of you flail around in pulsing fields, pew-pewing with chip attacks to apply on-hit effects, and then eventually one of you dies, with no real indication of what you did wrong, what you should have dodged. With no clear explanation, and no ability to learn from this and plan better for next time, the player will conclude that the condi build is just "overpowered" or "cheese", and that's that.

IMO re-thinking how conditions are applied will go a long way to making them acceptable to people.what he did miss however is resistance, this boon is IMO a bandaid fix that is just way too strong in some cases. to make condition damage more reliable, one would also limit resistance to non damaging conditions, basically like a stability for debilitating condis.

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:I think problems arrive in droves when people try to reinvent the wheel every time it goes flat. some buffs to some condi builds would be good. some other cleanses could be toned down. no need to go all out, because as you've laid out already it doesn't really go well. incremental changes, not a tidal wave.

Who said you have to address the power creep in one go? What's to stop you toning the game down over say 4-6 patches? Nerfing has risks but for the most part apart from making 1 build stupidly strong by essentially nerfing everything too much there's not a lot to go terribly wrong.

Reworking core mechanics though? That's new territory and revamping systems often creates massive issue, remember the phantasm rework? Now imagine this across 9 different classes every time they approach a system.

Like it or not Arena Net has a really bad history with reworks taking the game and breaking it for several patches, usually 2-6 months. I trust them just enough to wave their arms wildly with nerfs and get the game into a somewhat more enjoyable shape, I don't trust them to rework several mechanics without it leading to me leaving the game for 2-3 years as that's how long it would take for them to sort it out.

To make sure your goals are clear and reachable, each one should be:

Specific (simple, sensible, significant).Measurable (meaningful, motivating).Achievable (agreed, attainable).Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).Time bound (time-based, time limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/smart-goals.htm

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@TorQ.7041 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:An aspect that you have not addressed, and which I think is the biggest reason people always hate conditions, is the way they get applied.

Now, I am generalising here, but conditions tend to come from 100s of small hits, rather than a single big hit. Condition builds often seem to rely on either laying down a load of pulsing fields or AI, and then just waiting for damage to accrue, or else rely on on-hit/on-crit applications to stack up based on hitting the enemy 100s of times.

Compare this to, say, a warrior coming at you with an axe, or a hammer-guardian, or a fresh-air ele, or...... etc. In these cases it is very obvious to the player that "in order to win, I must dodge/mitigate these 2-3 skills". There is a tactical game of move and counter-move, where the warrior is trying to set-up an eviscerate, and their opponent is trying to anticipate and dodge it. And if their opponent fails, it is quite obvious to them why they have failed, and they can learn from it, plan better for next time, etc.

Whereas against condi builds, both of you flail around in pulsing fields, pew-pewing with chip attacks to apply on-hit effects, and then eventually one of you dies, with no real indication of what you did wrong, what you should have dodged. With no clear explanation, and no ability to learn from this and plan better for next time, the player will conclude that the condi build is just "overpowered" or "cheese", and that's that.

IMO re-thinking how conditions are applied will go a long way to making them acceptable to people.

That's actually another part of the problem though to.

Extreme class bias. As long as people display such bias nothing actually gets to a point where it is in a good spot mechanically because it is continually nerfed to oblivion.All through the history of this game, when something is nerfed an inch the community demands a mile, but when they get that mile, they demand 5 miles, etc. etc.As long as we have that type of environment then nothing will ever progress, and we will always be stuck in this FoTM phase.