Conditions Vs Power Debate

[Vallun.2071]

Full Script:There are two main damage types in guild wars 2. Conditions which are basically debuffs and power which is a strike damage. Conditions used to be terrible in guild wars 2 before the massive trait rework in preparation for the first expansion. Before then, damaging conditions besides bleeding did not stack in duration, making it very hard for multiple condition builds to work together. Also conditions were too slow to deal damage because you were stacking the duration, making hybrid builds much better than full condition builds. In PvE condition builds were shunned out of groups, but in PvP and WvW they were acceptable for only the small scale fights. It was a very toxic relationship the community had with conditions because they were not wanted because they could not contribute as much in group fights, and the players who did stick to themselves were considered trolls or griefers because they needed to specialize in 1v1s if they wanted to be useful.

When damaging conditions were allowed to stack and became an actual threat there was a huge backlash from the community saying that conditions were too strong, and that they bursted harder than power damage. However, most of us did not know how to properly deal with conditions because they were never that strong. Now when the two damage types are more balanced it appears that conditions are stronger because people never adjusted their playstyle or builds to adapt.

I will be analyzing some common misconceptions about the two damage types to quell some of the constant bias and misinterpretation of the dynamic between these two.

Skill Floor

The first topic we'll look at is which damage type is easier to play. Conditions do much more damage if not cleansed and take time to deal their damage, so there is less coordination involved like in power builds. However, Some power builds are much easier to play than condition builds.At a certain level, power builds can become one shot builds, or builds that focus on downing an enemy in one single short burst while sacrificing a lot of their personal survivability. Once you learn the skill combination to perform the burst, the gameplay is rather simple and shallow. If you land the burst the interaction is over instantly, and if you dont land it you either die or run away.

Another aspect that suggests the ease of condition builds is the amount of stats allocated toward builds. Power builds use power precision and ferocity to get their damage, meanwhile condition builds only use condition damage and duration. So to maximize a power builds use of damage you need to utitlize three stats and to maximize a condition builds condition damage you only need two stats, allowing much more room for defensive stats, making condition builds tankier usually. right? Wrong. If you simply put full marauder or full trailblazer on a build, obviously the full trailblazer build will seem easier, because its a well rounded set up. If you simplify your build to full marauder and dont take any protection or toughness modifiers in your build you will have a bad time just the same as if you take no condition cleanses against a condition build. And this is the issue I see with a lot of people who take the stance that conditions are easier. They just simply run greedy power builds that have no condition cleanse on them and claim that running condition cleanses doesn allow the full potential of their build and is less fun. To me, dying to conditions or other circumstances i cant control isnt fun.

Also a lot of condition builds will trade traits that power builds would use for survivability to deal conditions. For example, a condition thief mightuse the poison trait whereas a power thief would always use improvisation which would make up a lot of the survivability difference in stats. Yes it would simplify the build a lot to run tankier stats and passive damage traits, which would make a condition build easier to play, but thats a choice. I could run a knights holosmith and it would be just as easy as a trailblazer herald. I do think the trailblazer stats are a bit overpowered, but so is the cleansing sigil. Also going full trailblazer makes your build a bit of a one trick, you can be easily countered by condition cleanse because you have no other damage sources. Yes I do find condition builds easier to play, especially in WvW where trailblazer exists, Conditions may be easier to play but are also easier to handle which leads to my next topic.

Counterplayability?

Power damage is instant, so you can only dodge it and if you get hit the damage is done. but it can be reduced by toughness and protection.Condition damage can be dodged on its application but can also be cleansed and takes longer than power damage to be dealt, but it generally does more damage if it isnt cleansed. It can be ignored with resistance and cover conditions can make cleansing harder.

I think without a doubt conditions have much more counterplay to them. However, what people misunderstand is the ease at which they are counterplayed. Conditions add more complexity to situations by increasing the amount of decisions you need to make. You have to not only look at the animations of your opponents and dodge them, but you also need to decide which skills to tank and cleanse or when to cleanse them.

Especially when dealing with Torment and Confusion, conditions can also change the way you play and add another level of complxity to counterplay and deciding when to cleanse. In the example of torment, you can decide to stand still to take less torment damage, but that would make you more vulnerable at the same time, so you need to decide if and when and where to stand. Against confusion you take more damage each skill you use, so you need to decide whether to cleanse it or to wait it out, or which skills are important enough to use while confused. These definitely make it harder for newer players, but with practice and awareness, you get the feel for how much cleanse you can afford.

Blind and daze are very easy to recognize conditions because your screen turns a bit purple or dark when you have them. It would be nice if there was more UI customizability to allow players to move their buff or condition bar or resize it to make it more visible. This would allow more visibility if players choose it.

What people don't acknowledge is that condition builds are usually slower so they require less awareness to avoid, and that power builds use conditions too. If you get weakness on you against a power build, ignoring that and mashing all of your damage out during it will also punish you similarly to not cleansing damaging conditions properly. So you still need to watch your UI against power builds.

Another thing that players misunderstand is the representation of conditions through skills. If a revenant hits you with a sword attack you can clearly see how much damage it did to you in the combat log. If a necromancer hits you with 10 attacks that each stack up bleeds, you only see the accumulated bleed ticks. It is harder for people to learn what is actually killing them because the damage of each condition applying skill is separated from the original impact. If you aren't aware of what the enemy build is, its much harder to understand which component of it you failed to interact with, whereas a power build much more vividly tells you when you messed up.

This is misinterpreted especially in PvP when people look at the death recap. There are many skills that contribute to a certain condition's final damage dealt to you. With power skills though, you see only how much that specific skill did to you. This leads to a representative bias because they see that burning did the most damage to them over time and assume that is what killed them, but in reality they would have just survived and kept healing and cleansing if the fight kept progressing onward. What might have actually killed them is the power spike they took when they were low which ended the fight before they could react. Likewise you could misinterpret power burst damage as the cause of death when you mismanaged your cooldowns earlier in the fight due to condition pressure. Another example of this is when its a close match in pvp and theres a final winning play by one of the teams that gets them above the other at the last second. Most people call that the winning play because its done in the most crucial moment, but in reality the whole match had decisions and plays to make to even allow the match to be close.

You also see people commending a thief for getting kills quickly in a plus 1, but thats because their duelist was pressuring hard enough before they got there, but you don't see that, and it leads to that idea of a representative bias. Its the job of the player they plus 1 to bait out the cooldowns effectively. Thats the beauty of a game designed around sustained and burst damage. If there were no conditions, bunkers would be overpowered, and if neither conditions or bunkers existed, everyone would just run one shot builds. Without all of these varieties and playstyles, teamwork would be much less dynamic and it would very interactive. People love to oversimplify things, and even I am doing that by allowing the debate to exist between power and condition, when hybrid and support specs, and a completely different dimensions of roles also exist. As you can see the job of a balance developer is much more complicated than it appears to us.

Hopefully you can see why the two are necessary to a healthy game balance now.

Maybe they are both necessary, but perhaps one is unfun or creates an unfun environment with how spammy it can be? Just like a power build, condition builds have to bait out dodges and generally a power build will bait out stun breaks while a condition build will play around condition cleanses. If they just spam out all their high condition damage skills immediately it will just get cleansed.Analyzing the specifics of each playstyle is irrelevant since each playstyle can manifest differently between the classes. A Condition ele may be fun to play against, but a condition thief isnt. But a power thief also isnt very fun to play against either. In general, I would say that what makes a build spammy or uninteractive has nothing to do with which damage type they offer, and more on the interactivity of their animations and resources that are manageable.

I didn't want to say it, but generally if youre complaining about condition damage builds, you just need to get good and deal with conditions better. Luckily for you I will link to you in the description a guide I made on how to fight against conditions in the context of condition thief. But the tips in the video can apply to any condition build, So yea watch that video if you wish.

I personally prefer power builds and find them more fun. Three of my favorite builds in the game, dash dp daredevil, power reaper, and greatsword guardian, are all power. But I still play condition builds because they can be fun sometimes and it helps me to learn how to play against them. So if you struggle against conditions and find yourself blaming conditions, maybe try one out.

[Salt Mode.3780]

someone with a brain posted something that is worth reading thank you

[darren.1064]

Did you just make a whole post about why conditions are better and then end it with "if youre complaining about condition builds, you just need to get good and deal with conditions better?"

[Ovark.2514]

@"darren.1064" said:Did you just make a whole post about why conditions are better and then end it with "if youre complaining about condition builds, you just need to get good and deal with conditions better?"

It doesn't bother him so it's not a problem.

[DENk.8561]

For my logics, conditions builds is stacking against enemy cleanse making it worst if enemy not alone, cuz most cleansing is not for yourself, but and for teammates. Bassicly success rate for condis is like "maybie yes maybie not" and makes it all random Win against medium ranked players. Opposite for: power builds is a straight burst dps.

So with current system between premade partys and solo quenne Win rate becomes forever at 50/50 for solo q., maybie yes maybie not while ignoring skill rating and you just again and again reworking your build even if it was already high tier...

[otto.5684]

This is a good post for starters, but there is more.

Condi builds have easier time using tank stats, since power damage relies on 3 stats, while condi only use 1. 2 if you count expertise, but is not sPvP relevant. This does not necessarily mean condi builds are stronger, but can be more difficult to kill.

Biggest mistake I see from majority of the players is over cleansing. You do not have to cleanse every time you are hit with a condi. It takes a good bit of knowledge knowing when to cleanse and when to wait.

Same mistake on condi application (and damage in general). Do not over commit on applying condi damage. Try to bait over cleansing. If enemy starts to play dumb, and the previously did not, they are baiting you to over commit on damage. As a guardian main, I do this all the time. I run CoP which converts all condis to boons. If I have 6 different condis, I will get 6 different. This works with any class that has either full cleanse or ~5 condi removing skills. If I appear sleeping behind the wheel, and you start treating me like an NPC, it is you who are sleeping behind the wheel.

If your class lacks the ability to deal with condi reapplication, do not keep trying to solo a condi enemy. If you fought them once and it did not work, do not do it 15 more times. Pre Feb patch, I used to play sage FB frequently. I used to see SB trying to solo me all the time, and almost always lose, yet the same person keeps trying again. I guess this applies to all builds in all situations, but it is pretty oblivious with condi builds.

Do not assume condi builds do not deal power damage. Some do. Guardian in particular. And sometimes doing damage is catalyst to apply more condis.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

There is indeed more.

One thing I'll add is that when you're vs. power, regardless of what your build is, you only need to worry about using skills like "Shake It Off" or "Contemplation Of Purity" or "Lightning Reflexes" for the stun breaks. However vs. condi, it pressures a player so he must use utilities for both stun breaks and condi cleanses. I find condition based builds bait out their opponent's cool downs a great deal more quickly due to this.

The other thing I'll add is that most, and I do mean MOST of the condi based attacks in the game have little to no telegraphs. Power damage is general tied to the telegraphs of weapon animations, which makes power based builds easy to watch and pay attention to. However condi traits & effects are styled to just sort of... slide in and apply to w/e attack happens. A good example being the entire Deadly Arts line, Thief Venoms, Ranger Sharp Stone/Vulture Stance, Guardian Burn spam on hits any hits, ect ect. Even the condi based attacks that do have telegraphs, are usually big fat AoEs that can't really be entirely avoided in the same way that a person could perfectly kite and counter play a Spellbreaker or a Power Herald or a Reaper.

^ Due to the above 2 aforementioned points, condi builds are inherently stronger than power builds, mechanically. They are easier to learn, play, land attacks with, and a mixture of CC + condi will bait an opponent's cool downs a lot faster than CC + power. For these reasons and all of the ones already mentioned, arenanet should always pay very close attention to condi damage and if it is being power crept.

I agree with Vallun that power builds are just more fun to play. In fact, environments that consist almost entirely of pure power builds, make the game a lot more fun. This is because you can actually SEE what is happening in a world of Spellbreaker vs. DP Daredevil vs. Reaper as examples. When telegraphs are all clean like this, it brings a much larger difference in between good players and not so good players.

[Ragnar.4257]

I just enjoy how whenever this topic comes up, some mouth-breather always says "you can't dodge conditions".

I'm genuinely interested how these people survive in real life. Do they have handlers?

[DENk.8561]

...For example 2 necros spamming unlimited conditions with fears and ele's tornado on top. You just can do nothing then.

[lare.5129]

ofc condi more fun for me.. spam it and get burbles of luck!

[DENk.8561]

Most of the Power builds is Close combat hits, that means you often put yourself onto conditions spammed ground.

[Ragnar.4257]

Just to expand on a point that a few people have touched upon:

@"Ragnar.4257" said:It's got nothing to do with how strong/weak conditions are compared to power.

It's about the method of delivery.

Power builds, for the most part, have a few hard-hitting skills, that if you dodge then you win, and if you don't dodge you lose. They're often better telegraphed as well.

Condition builds, for the most part, are designed around pulsing AoE fields, and spamming chip attacks for on-hit/on-crit effects. There's nothing important to dodge, it's just an endless bombardment of tiny attacks.

When people lose to a power build, they're less likely to feel they've been "cheated" because it's fairly obvious that they could've dodged that eviscerate/mightyblow/maul etc etc. The player who did the best job dodging or setting up hits wins. There's an honesty to it.

When people lose to a condi build, it generally feels more like the build won rather than the person. It feels cheap. It wasn't to do with dodging the right stuff or setting up the right combo's, it was just an inevitability of the combination of traits, stats, slotted skills, etc.

I'm not saying those view are always "correct", but that's why people don't like condi. Method of delivery. Not comparative strength.

[AliamRationem.5172]

Maybe it's just condi weaver is a special case, but I don't understand the whole "method of delivery" argument. I mean power LR weaver is basically all passive damage pressure from lightning strikes on rotating into air and landing CC while rotating through an assortment of skills, softening them up for big attacks that are largely telegraphed. Meanwhile condi weaver uses primordial stance, lava skin, etc. the same way but always to soften them up for something like gale + pyrovortex. It feels very similar to me.

I also don't understand the stat advantage argument for competitive. Trailblazer being the most quoted example. I think people forget that pressure is what matters. Expertise is a pretty questionable pressure stat. But what else can you run with a condi build? Nothing! You can go power hybrid, but then you're playing the long game with damage over time while running full glass. In WvW roaming that's usually a bad bet and you'd be better off running a power build. I'm sure a lot of condi players would love to have a third damage stat that actually increases pressure by front-loading more of their damage so they can do the "marauder" version of condi. It just doesn't exist.

It works out better in PvP where damage is lower and stat selection is limited. There you actually get a useful amount of pressure by trading some vitality for power hybrid stats like sinister. I find this pretty enjoyable, while roaming with sword weaver using trailblazer stats feels pretty lame because it's so easy to counter (although that also has to do with the limitations of sword in open field and not just how easy pure condi is to counter).

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

@"Ragnar.4257" said:I just enjoy how whenever this topic comes up, some mouth-breather always says "you can't dodge conditions".

I'm genuinely interested how these people survive in real life. Do they have handlers?

I happen to be very good at avoiding condis irl. Its only in game where they are op. Though I must say confusion is far too common irl.

[Aeolus.3615]

For some reason i love torment bomb aad fear target trying yo cleanse, it will get interrupt with fear on top of alot of tormend :PThen its just some minimal cover condis spam cause its not hard to deal with most condi cleanses, exception the classes/builds with alots of condi cleanses.

[Leonidrex.5649]

@"DENk.8561" said:For my logics, conditions builds is stacking against enemy cleanse making it worst if enemy not alone, cuz most cleansing is not for yourself, but and for teammates. Bassicly success rate for condis is like "maybie yes maybie not" and makes it all random Win against medium ranked players. Opposite for: power builds is a straight burst dps.

So with current system between premade partys and solo quenne Win rate becomes forever at 50/50 for solo q., maybie yes maybie not while ignoring skill rating and you just again and again reworking your build even if it was already high tier...

there is nothing random there, you and your team either cleanses properly or not.its like saying that power damage is random because people sometimes dodge attacks and take no damage and sometimes they dont and get bursted down

[Leonidrex.5649]

@"Ragnar.4257" said:I just enjoy how whenever this topic comes up, some mouth-breather always says "you can't dodge conditions".

I'm genuinely interested how these people survive in real life. Do they have handlers?

with the power of mothers tendies, that's for sure

[Leonidrex.5649]

@DENk.8561 said:...For example 2 necros spamming unlimited conditions with fears and ele's tornado on top. You just can do nothing then.

as opposed to reaper and holo training you down with 10k hits while being flung by ele?

[KrHome.1920]

@"Ragnar.4257" said:I just enjoy how whenever this topic comes up, some mouth-breather always says "you can't dodge conditions".

I'm genuinely interested how these people survive in real life. Do they have handlers?

@"Ragnar.4257" said:Just to expand on a point that a few people have touched upon:

It's got nothing to do with how strong/weak conditions are compared to power.

It's about the method of delivery.

Power builds, for the most part, have a few hard-hitting skills, that if you dodge then you win, and if you don't dodge you lose. They're often better telegraphed as well.

Condition builds, for the most part, are designed around pulsing AoE fields, and spamming chip attacks for on-hit/on-crit effects. There's nothing important to dodge, it's just an endless bombardment of tiny attacks.

When people lose to a power build, they're less likely to feel they've been "cheated" because it's fairly obvious that they could've dodged that eviscerate/mightyblow/maul etc etc. The player who did the best job dodging or setting up hits wins. There's an honesty to it.

When people lose to a condi build, it generally feels more like the build won rather than the person. It feels cheap. It wasn't to do with dodging the right stuff or setting up the right combo's, it was just an inevitability of the combination of traits, stats, slotted skills, etc.

I'm not saying those view are always "correct", but that's why people don't like condi. Method of delivery. Not comparative strength.So dodge conditions, because they are an endless bombardement of tiny attacks and there is nothing important to dodge.

Who is the mouth breather here?

You can not win against a condi build with dodges alone. If you could, then cleanses would not exist. It's complete nonesense what you say. Read what otto.5684 wrote about cleanse timing. That's what most players fail at. That's why lots of players think condi rev and condi guard are overpowered. They cleanse 2 burn/torment while they could have cleansed 10 and nullified most of the incoming damage, if they had waited one more second.

And insulting people as mouth breathers while talking complete nonsense is... I do better not say it.

[Sifu.9745]

As a casual player i swear on condi builds. It's so much easier than power ... Power builds are complicated as hell (most of them), if you miss your great hit/s you are pretty much done, which is not a case when playing condi: you can simply reapply them over and over again and you can do it from safe distance with ranged weapons in most cases. Condi builds have better survivability(most of them, especialy in OW and WvW) and easier time to deal dmg, what else do i need?

Why should i play a glass cannon Reaper, if i get constantly killed within 5 seconds, if i can simply play a Scourge, killing one player while tanking the dmg of another one? Or why would i waste my time with power guardian, if i can do everything 3 times better with core condi Guard or bunker guard? Condi core Mesmer and Mirage are another examples: when i barely do any dmg with a power GS chorno, i can do way better dmg with condi + better defensive tools.

I would say, condi and bunker builds are much easier then dps power builds, at least in my hands in solo queues. There are few exceptions, off course, such as condi Berserker or condi Ranger: they are both on a weaker side of condi builds while Power LB Ranger being the easiest power build.

Not my fault if condi and bunker builds are way easier then power ones: i simply don't have a time to learn all this complicated power and group support stuff. I like simplistic, non group oriented playstyle and 1 vs 1 fights.

[Ghos.1326]

@"Vallun.2071" said:

Full Script:There are two main damage types in guild wars 2. Conditions which are basically debuffs and power which is a strike damage. Conditions used to be terrible in guild wars 2 before the massive trait rework in preparation for the first expansion. Before then, damaging conditions besides bleeding did not stack in duration, making it very hard for multiple condition builds to work together. Also conditions were too slow to deal damage because you were stacking the duration, making hybrid builds much better than full condition builds. In PvE condition builds were shunned out of groups, but in PvP and WvW they were acceptable for only the small scale fights. It was a very toxic relationship the community had with conditions because they were not wanted because they could not contribute as much in group fights, and the players who did stick to themselves were considered trolls or griefers because they needed to specialize in 1v1s if they wanted to be useful.

When damaging conditions were allowed to stack and became an actual threat there was a huge backlash from the community saying that conditions were too strong, and that they bursted harder than power damage. However, most of us did not know how to properly deal with conditions because they were never that strong. Now when the two damage types are more balanced it appears that conditions are stronger because people never adjusted their playstyle or builds to adapt.

I will be analyzing some common misconceptions about the two damage types to quell some of the constant bias and misinterpretation of the dynamic between these two.

Skill Floor

The first topic we'll look at is which damage type is easier to play. Conditions do much more damage if not cleansed and take time to deal their damage, so there is less coordination involved like in power builds. However, Some power builds are much easier to play than condition builds.At a certain level, power builds can become one shot builds, or builds that focus on downing an enemy in one single short burst while sacrificing a lot of their personal survivability. Once you learn the skill combination to perform the burst, the gameplay is rather simple and shallow. If you land the burst the interaction is over instantly, and if you dont land it you either die or run away.

Another aspect that suggests the ease of condition builds is the amount of stats allocated toward builds. Power builds use power precision and ferocity to get their damage, meanwhile condition builds only use condition damage and duration. So to maximize a power builds use of damage you need to utitlize three stats and to maximize a condition builds condition damage you only need two stats, allowing much more room for defensive stats, making condition builds tankier usually. right? Wrong. If you simply put full marauder or full trailblazer on a build, obviously the full trailblazer build will seem easier, because its a well rounded set up. If you simplify your build to full marauder and dont take any protection or toughness modifiers in your build you will have a bad time just the same as if you take no condition cleanses against a condition build. And this is the issue I see with a lot of people who take the stance that conditions are easier. They just simply run greedy power builds that have no condition cleanse on them and claim that running condition cleanses doesn allow the full potential of their build and is less fun. To me, dying to conditions or other circumstances i cant control isnt fun.

Also a lot of condition builds will trade traits that power builds would use for survivability to deal conditions. For example, a condition thief mightuse the poison trait whereas a power thief would always use improvisation which would make up a lot of the survivability difference in stats. Yes it would simplify the build a lot to run tankier stats and passive damage traits, which would make a condition build easier to play, but thats a choice. I could run a knights holosmith and it would be just as easy as a trailblazer herald. I do think the trailblazer stats are a bit overpowered, but so is the cleansing sigil. Also going full trailblazer makes your build a bit of a one trick, you can be easily countered by condition cleanse because you have no other damage sources. Yes I do find condition builds easier to play, especially in WvW where trailblazer exists, Conditions may be easier to play but are also easier to handle which leads to my next topic.

Counterplayability?

Power damage is instant, so you can only dodge it and if you get hit the damage is done. but it can be reduced by toughness and protection.Condition damage can be dodged on its application but can also be cleansed and takes longer than power damage to be dealt, but it generally does more damage if it isnt cleansed. It can be ignored with resistance and cover conditions can make cleansing harder.

I think without a doubt conditions have much more counterplay to them. However, what people misunderstand is the ease at which they are counterplayed. Conditions add more complexity to situations by increasing the amount of decisions you need to make. You have to not only look at the animations of your opponents and dodge them, but you also need to decide which skills to tank and cleanse or when to cleanse them.

Especially when dealing with Torment and Confusion, conditions can also change the way you play and add another level of complxity to counterplay and deciding when to cleanse. In the example of torment, you can decide to stand still to take less torment damage, but that would make you more vulnerable at the same time, so you need to decide if and when and where to stand. Against confusion you take more damage each skill you use, so you need to decide whether to cleanse it or to wait it out, or which skills are important enough to use while confused. These definitely make it harder for newer players, but with practice and awareness, you get the feel for how much cleanse you can afford.

Blind and daze are very easy to recognize conditions because your screen turns a bit purple or dark when you have them. It would be nice if there was more UI customizability to allow players to move their buff or condition bar or resize it to make it more visible. This would allow more visibility if players choose it.

What people don't acknowledge is that condition builds are usually slower so they require less awareness to avoid, and that power builds use conditions too. If you get weakness on you against a power build, ignoring that and mashing all of your damage out during it will also punish you similarly to not cleansing damaging conditions properly. So you still need to watch your UI against power builds.

Another thing that players misunderstand is the representation of conditions through skills. If a revenant hits you with a sword attack you can clearly see how much damage it did to you in the combat log. If a necromancer hits you with 10 attacks that each stack up bleeds, you only see the accumulated bleed ticks. It is harder for people to learn what is actually killing them because the damage of each condition applying skill is separated from the original impact. If you aren't aware of what the enemy build is, its much harder to understand which component of it you failed to interact with, whereas a power build much more vividly tells you when you messed up.

This is misinterpreted especially in PvP when people look at the death recap. There are many skills that contribute to a certain condition's final damage dealt to you. With power skills though, you see only how much that specific skill did to you. This leads to a representative bias because they see that burning did the most damage to them over time and assume that is what killed them, but in reality they would have just survived and kept healing and cleansing if the fight kept progressing onward. What might have actually killed them is the power spike they took when they were low which ended the fight before they could react. Likewise you could misinterpret power burst damage as the cause of death when you mismanaged your cooldowns earlier in the fight due to condition pressure. Another example of this is when its a close match in pvp and theres a final winning play by one of the teams that gets them above the other at the last second. Most people call that the winning play because its done in the most crucial moment, but in reality the whole match had decisions and plays to make to even allow the match to be close.

You also see people commending a thief for getting kills quickly in a plus 1, but thats because their duelist was pressuring hard enough before they got there, but you don't see that, and it leads to that idea of a representative bias. Its the job of the player they plus 1 to bait out the cooldowns effectively. Thats the beauty of a game designed around sustained and burst damage. If there were no conditions, bunkers would be overpowered, and if neither conditions or bunkers existed, everyone would just run one shot builds. Without all of these varieties and playstyles, teamwork would be much less dynamic and it would very interactive. People love to oversimplify things, and even I am doing that by allowing the debate to exist between power and condition, when hybrid and support specs, and a completely different dimensions of roles also exist. As you can see the job of a balance developer is much more complicated than it appears to us.

Hopefully you can see why the two are necessary to a healthy game balance now.

Maybe they are both necessary, but perhaps one is unfun or creates an unfun environment with how spammy it can be? Just like a power build, condition builds have to bait out dodges and generally a power build will bait out stun breaks while a condition build will play around condition cleanses. If they just spam out all their high condition damage skills immediately it will just get cleansed.Analyzing the specifics of each playstyle is irrelevant since each playstyle can manifest differently between the classes. A Condition ele may be fun to play against, but a condition thief isnt. But a power thief also isnt very fun to play against either. In general, I would say that what makes a build spammy or uninteractive has nothing to do with which damage type they offer, and more on the interactivity of their animations and resources that are manageable.

I didn't want to say it, but generally if youre complaining about condition damage builds, you just need to get good and deal with conditions better. Luckily for you I will link to you in the description a guide I made on how to fight against conditions in the context of condition thief. But the tips in the video can apply to any condition build, So yea watch that video if you wish.

I personally prefer power builds and find them more fun. Three of my favorite builds in the game, dash dp daredevil, power reaper, and greatsword guardian, are all power. But I still play condition builds because they can be fun sometimes and it helps me to learn how to play against them. So if you struggle against conditions and find yourself blaming conditions, maybe try one out.

Excellent post man. I agree with many topics here, and can see the path that anet took in terms of how the damage is dealt and its effects throughout combat. I enjoyed the read and I do agree with some points. There are points that I disagree with however when it comes to the conditions aspect of things.While I agree that condition builds back in the day were slower burns (no pun intended) over time, I think conditions should feel that way as they are damage over time debuffs placed on a character in order to kill them off slowly. As a result, most conditions builds ran something tanky, and there were amulets to support this playstyle: surviving oncoming damage through high toughness and other defensive traits and damage mitigations while slowly whittling away your opponent with a steady stream of condition application. Back then, things like burning and poison had been capped at 1 stack to balance out conditions due to burning having the highest damage coeff per so many points of condition damage, and poison having the extra utility of reducing heal effectiveness by a fixed amount while afflicted with it, while also providing decent condition damage coeff as well (not as much as burning of course). And this was absolutely fine: the give and take, so to speak.

The specialization patch (the one before HoT) hit and burning and poison were changed to be able to stack now. Which was an interesting change, I feel, however it introduced some issues. One of which made burning in particular more of a burst damage condition instead of a higher intensity health burn over time. Poison also was significantly buffed because now it can deal really high amounts of damage per second while also still reducing healing output. But something else happened that many people may not think about, or have never really considered: it invalidated an aspect of the game that mitigated condition damage, healing over time through regeneration. It would be natural that a counterplay to damage over time would be healing over time, but after burn and poison were buffed as significantly as they were, this wasn't the case.

One thing I would have done was made this specific change PvE only for the purpose of killing raid bosses, but in WvW and sPvP, I'd have kept burn and poison capped at one stack. HOWEVER!! I'd have just increased the amount of stacks bleed and other conditions could stack in PvP so that putting on a dung load of bleeding and other conditions in a teamfight would have mattered much more than it did only having bleed stacks capped at 25.

Another thing I'd have done was increase the coeff of burn and poison some so that it would be more impactful on full condition builds, but then I think it would have ran the risk of also being much more effective on hybrid builds, which is something you noted in your example in your post which I agree with. Many of the builds you seen running around were celestial amulet builds. However, the answer to that may have been to decrease celestial amulet's effectiveness at that time, which they did not decrease it during that time and it gave 560 of each stat instead of the 400 or so that we get on it now.

All in all, while I think some conditions should be burst focused (like confusion and torment), I think in general a damage over time effect shouldn't take extremely large chunks of your health away per second, as it defeats the purpose of a damage over time effect: smaller chunks of damage depleted over a longer time span. If they were to cap burn and poison back to 1 stack, I'd be all for increasing the duration of those and all other skills that output condition stacks by a significant amount to offset so that it will punish a build that doesn't run any condition cleanses and may focus on doing DPS in teamfights or roaming if they let the caster freely apply conditions to them throughout their engagements.I'd also, however, bring down the amount of conditions cleansed on a lot of skills. An example I'll choose to pick on is my own profession, Engineer. Specifically Scrapper. Purge gyro would cleanse only 3 conditions during its uptime, from start to finish. So it'll cleanse a condition when first procced, a couple seconds after another, and then the final procc another. And maybe, to cut RNG, have it focus on removing only damaging conditions, so that counterplay can still happen with keeping the opponent controlled in a big teamfight situation.One thing I agree with you on is the burst damage thing. But I think that builds that run Marauder's amulets should not see the kind of damage outputs that a berserker's amulet build sees. Currently, using thief as an example, one can run an assassin's build and still hit upwards of 7k hits in short windows of downtime (3-5 seconds), which I think is unhealthy (give vs take). Which is why I think some things still need some nerfs, because I agree that power damage can also just be as annoying as 5-6 stacks of burn on you for the entirety of your fight. I'd even opt to changing up Scrapper's trait Applied force to either halve the power damage gained while having quickness, or remove that aspect of the trait entirely, as faster damage ultimately equates to more damage in the long run.

If I think of anymore to say I'll edit the post, I'm still kind of getting it together right now and still finishing up my coffee here at work.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

condi builds would be fine if there weren't so many cover condis on some of the builds. some debilitating condi durations are out of whack too. imo boon + condi duration gear update was a huge step back since its not only another big thing to balance, but it dilutes gameplay with an unnecessary mechanic.

[Ragnar.4257]

@KrHome.1920 said:

@"Ragnar.4257" said:I just enjoy how whenever this topic comes up,

some mouth-breather always says "you can't dodge conditions"

.

I'm genuinely interested how these people survive in real life. Do they have handlers?

@"Ragnar.4257" said:Just to expand on a point that a few people have touched upon:

It's got nothing to do with how strong/weak conditions are compared to power.

It's about the method of delivery.

Power builds, for the most part, have a few hard-hitting skills, that if you dodge then you win, and if you don't dodge you lose. They're often better telegraphed as well.

Condition builds, for the most part, are designed around pulsing AoE fields, and spamming chip attacks for on-hit/on-crit effects.

There's nothing important to dodge, it's just an endless bombardment of tiny attacks.

When people lose to a power build, they're less likely to feel they've been "cheated" because it's fairly obvious that they could've dodged that eviscerate/mightyblow/maul etc etc. The player who did the best job dodging or setting up hits wins. There's an honesty to it.

When people lose to a condi build, it generally feels more like the build won rather than the person. It feels cheap. It wasn't to do with dodging the right stuff or setting up the right combo's, it was just an inevitability of the combination of traits, stats, slotted skills, etc.

I'm not saying those view are always "correct", but that's why people don't like condi.

Method of delivery

.

Not

comparative strength.So dodge conditions, because they are an endless bombardement of tiny attacks and there is nothing important to dodge.

Who is the mouth breather here?

You can not win against a condi build with dodges alone. If you could, then cleanses would not exist. It's complete nonesense what you say. Read what otto.5684 wrote about cleanse timing. That's what most players fail at. That's why lots of players think condi rev and condi guard are overpowered. They cleanse 2 burn/torment while they could have cleansed 10 and nullified most of the incoming damage, if they had waited one more second.

And insulting people as mouth breathers while talking complete nonsense is... I do better not say it.

I don't think you understand English.

The second quote you have highlighted does not contradict the first. Two things can be true at the same time. It is true that condition attacks can be dodged (and that people saying that you can't are quite clearly wrong), and also true that condition builds are less interactive to play against, since there's less "focal points" of damage.

Also, when did I suggest that you can beat a condi build with only dodges? You're just making stuff up now. And why do you think I need advice on timing cleanses? Did you think I was posting to say that conditions are overpowered? Then you didn't read what I wrote. Conditions, in terms of their absolute strength, are fine. They're just not fun.

[Ragnar.4257]

@"AliamRationem.5172" said:Maybe it's just condi weaver is a special case, but I don't understand the whole "method of delivery" argument. I mean power LR weaver is basically all passive damage pressure from lightning strikes on rotating into air and landing CC while rotating through an assortment of skills, softening them up for big attacks that are largely telegraphed. Meanwhile condi weaver uses primordial stance, lava skin, etc. the same way but always to soften them up for something like gale + pyrovortex. It feels very similar to me.

I mean, sure, there are some exceptions of power builds that generate pressure just by existing and being in your general vicinity, but they are the exceptions and not the rule. That's why I said "for the most part".

[Leonidrex.5649]

@Ragnar.4257 I disagree with conditions being less interactive then power, if anything they are more interactive, since you have more ways to work around them.