[Suggestion] Balancing Condition Damage

[Cogbyrn.7283]

@Turk.5460 said:

Sure, the combo's to achieve a burst from power generally require little effort, but still more than condi bursts. On top of that, condi builds generally have FAR more room for error should their burst be mitigated, or if their opponent counter-attacks immediately. There is no contest for who has it easier in terms of survivability and misplays...

Which condi bursts are you talking about in particular? Like, what buttons are being pressed to result in the burst, and how many stacks of what conditions do you get for landing each button press?

[Redponey.8352]

I dont say nerf all damage condition , it's a way to play different from power damage, but i blame it not on this way to deal damage but on the fact that damage relies on 1 attributes instead of 2 at least or 3 as power build. Actually if u compare a Power , robutness vitality build vs a condi robutness vitality build xD PRV is pretty useless because of it relies on a certain amount of attributes (precision / ferocity) to be really efficient.

I'm blaming the fact that we have no counter or alternative versus condi tank raids or zergs because of permapressure/permapushing , the only alternative we got is to play the same thing and it's actually no fun at all.

[Turk.5460]

@Cogbyrn.7283 said:

@Turk.5460 said:

Sure, the combo's to achieve a burst from power generally require little effort, but still more than condi bursts. On top of that, condi builds generally have

FAR

more room for error should their burst be mitigated, or if their opponent counter-attacks immediately. There is no contest for who has it easier in terms of survivability and misplays...

Which condi bursts are you talking about in particular? Like, what buttons are being pressed to result in the burst, and how many stacks of what conditions do you get for landing each button press?

If you don't already know the answer then your opinion on effort has no place in this conversation.

[Justine.6351]

Condi damage is fine now, it may even have been nerfed too much.

[coro.3176]

It's not condi that's the problem. It's a few builds (scourge, chrono, mirage).

Don't believe me? Go out and try playing condi ranger. Try playing condi revenant. Try playing condi engi.

[Cogbyrn.7283]

@Turk.5460 said:

@Cogbyrn.7283 said:

@Turk.5460 said:

Sure, the combo's to achieve a burst from power generally require little effort, but still more than condi bursts. On top of that, condi builds generally have

FAR

more room for error should their burst be mitigated, or if their opponent counter-attacks immediately. There is no contest for who has it easier in terms of survivability and misplays...

Which condi bursts are you talking about in particular? Like, what buttons are being pressed to result in the burst, and how many stacks of what conditions do you get for landing each button press?

If you don't already know the answer then your opinion on effort has no place in this conversation.

Sigh, and I really thought you might engage in a conversation instead of send your echo into the forum and see who bounces it back to determine in-group vs. out-group.

I haven't really played GW2 since a few months into HoT, but I've spent probably 1500 hours in WvW. I also spent an evening going down the "conditions do too much damage" rabbit hole, only to demonstrate to myself that condi pressure, just like power pressure, generally relies on certain abilities that can be dodged. You just have to figure out what to dodge. And, just like power pressure, some condi pressure needs to be proactively dodged given situational knowledge, instead of reactively dodged based on skill animations.

If you're concerned that the actual details might prove you wrong, well, you should be. As a baseline, with 2000 condi damage, 1 stack of bleeding will do about 142 damage/sec, and 1 stack of burning will do about 441 damage/sec. If someone stacks 15 bleeds and 5 burnings with full dedication to condi damage, you'll be taking roughly 4335 damage/sec, so if you have 20k health, that would still require 4.6 seconds to kill you. Factor in the time it takes for the enemy to attack to land all of those condis across multiple abilities, and your actual time-to-death is higher. Factor in the ability to dodge some of those applications and it's even higher. Factor in your ability to cleans that damage before it fully actualizes and it's even higher.

Sure, confusion-stacking condi Mesmers have been an issue (at least in the past) because even pressing the button to cleanse yourself of the conditions would take a huge chunk out. Guardians that pile burn on at once rip you down, but I don't know how much of a thing that really is anymore. What I'm curious about is what people actually consider "condi burst" these days, and what that burst actually requires ability-wise.

[Cogbyrn.7283]

Not to beat a dead horse, but to drive the point about power builds also looking for that easy-mode instant gratification, a Thief did a simple Steal+Backstab combo on me just this evening for a total of 12k damage (2.5k Steal, 9.5k Backstab). I don't recall any stacked Vulnerability or anything, and though I still don't have the gear I want, my overall Defense was at about 2500 to 2600 on my Ele.

WvW is an absolute circus of burst, so singling out one damage type over another just feels silly to me. When I take 12k damage instantly in the midst of a fight, it doesn't really matter to me that the Thief is full Zerk and would probably die in 2 hits if I ever landed them, and being full Zerk for some classes has a small fraction of the risk of others. Thieves are an extreme example, and I've always thought Thief was the most poorly designed class in the game, but burst is burst. It hasn't changed in the past 5-6 years, it won't change drastically now.

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

As someone who heavily played condi builds (currently play as DPS), its not 100% the damage itself, but partly some class's condi sustain. Without mentioning any classes by name, some can stack up fast consistently to the point where if you are not 110% smart about your clears (more micromanaging) then its useless.

One form was nerfed/balanced pretty quick, which strange enough is a newer condi build/class while others should be looked first, however it is what it is and im there to fight regardless.

[Sylosi.6503]

@X T D.6458 said:

@EUmad.7645 said:why not delete all condition builds and let only power ones ? it is simpler and faster. remove every condition from games and transmute every weapon on power. Would you be happy with that ?

...because it just feels so cheap, poorly balanced, and spam to win.

You should be playing another game, because that largely applies to the entire combat in this game.

[Sylosi.6503]

Condi is no different from power, i.e - the issue is certain classes/builds are OP, not that condi is OP in itself.

For example if you are having trouble against a p/p condi engy then the problem is between your seat and the keyboard, to kill pretty much anything they have to hit you at least a couple of times with pistol 4 skill (blowtorch) which is one of the harder skills in the game to land (contrary to this delusion that condi classes can simply spam, as opposed to holosmith where virtually everything does good damage and the range of "melee" is so big it is difficult to miss)

If you think that 3k armour gives them super defences, then think again, go play power mirage, power warrior/spellbreaker, etc and see classes that are far stronger defensively, far more mobile, etc, whilst doing far more damage.

So what you should learn is that it is not a "condi" issue, it is a class design/balance issue, where certain classes/builds are OP e.g condi mirage, so no different from power builds.

[Aeolus.3615]

@Sylosi.6503 class design is made towards players that are less than casuals... they need strong builds to make then feel they are acompleshing somehitng in this game.

It is a bad class and some awfull skills design from the developers, but that is what gw2 is made for, if u take that unbalance or bad design game wont offer nothing for casuals or bad players to thrive trough the game.

[Emerz.5913]

Condition damage is strong partly because the only ways to deal with it are to reduce condition duration and have condi clears (which can be worthless if someone can just sneeze on you again and give you more conditions with your condi clear on cd). Toughness increases armor, which reduces direct/power damage but not condition damage... which is something they should consider trying. If toughness can can offset some condition damage, it will give players more freedom with their builds as they won't need to focus so much on condi clear/sustain.

[Orpheal.8263]

OP: The word you are searching I guess is called TOUGHNESS, not robutness xD

Aside of that ..

Condition/Boons need to be completely rebalanced, and reworked, thats the only real way to solve the whole problem.

Reduce the Effect Spam by bringing down these 28 Effects of Condtions and Boons together DOWN TO 16 by reducing the effectzs from both sides from 14 to 8 and we will be a HUGE STEP closer to combat balance in this game and removal gameplay mechanics for conditions and boons becoming able again to handle all this effect spam mess that Anet fabricated with this game since HoT.

After that remove finalyl buff food from WvW, this stuff has nothign to search in WvW, Buff Food is PVE content!!! and should be also PvE only content, because as pve only content would make that also possible to give the game much better, more interesting, more fun and more diversive Buff Food effects, without having automaticalyl to fear and worry about those effects making WvW literally unplayable ...

Resistance needs to get removed a boon and turned instead into a new own defensive DUAL EFFECT ATTRIBUTE with the effect of decreasing the Condition Damager you suffer on and improving the player's Break Bar Efficiency, so that you become signicantly harder to CC, to give this game also finally an end to its obnoxious cc spam fest gameplay in WvW!! so that players have with this attrtibute finally a way to make themself become more immune to Condition Damage, which Toughness doesn't reduce amd become more immune to CC effects, so that they dont last on you so long and you also cant become so easily perma stunned, like it is possible right now, due to resistance increasing basically with a more powerful becoming Player Break Bar your chances, that you cant get immediately stunned again ,after you have been cc'ed.This way becomes Resitance a much more meaningful and inmpactful defensive attribute that will be important for players to have in competitive play like PvP or WvW, forcing players to put points into there, if they want to increase their survivability, leaind this way automatically in less points beign used into DPS attributes, so that players will deal automaticalyl lesser damage, if they have then to put more points into their defensive attributes, if they want to survive longer.

This game needs finally for better class balancing dual effect attribute, to give this game more defensive and suportive attribute effects,m which can also help in reducing some obsolete boons, like Quickness, like Vigor, if those get rather reworked to become instead secondary attribute effects, which affect a character's attack speed or, endurance regeneration efficiency.

rebalance finalyl better the efficiency of Vitalitys, increasign the amount of HP each Vitality Point gives, would also drasticalyl help on balanmcign this game, making finalyl Vitality more important and impactful, if finally 1000 Vitality wouldnt be only lousy loughable 10000 HP, but instead 25000 HP !!!This way would finally last battles also longer ridiculous 1 hit kills would become sigificantly less likely so that battles make again more fun for all!!

Remove attributes from gear, so that the attributes aren't bonded anymore to endless gear grind just to receive your optimal wished attribute setting, makign battles in WvW also more balanced, if players dont have to grind for gear and get upscaled their to max level like in pvp, so that everyone has there maximum stats, without the need to grind for any gear just to be able to play the build you want

Rebalance the base health values of all classes insividually, instead of still used the 2012er outdated 3 class type health system, which pigenonholes the health values of the classes way too much ,than is good actualyl for the class balance, where individually balanced health values for all classes would make much more sense.Under the current balance for example makes it absolute no sense at all, that mesmers, especialyl Mirages, have significantly much more health than thieves, thousands of endless spammable clones, can become also stealth, dodgy as like thieves ect and all this only, because threy have lesser armor values, but can completely negate this out by having tons of boons permanently, whiel the thief has no own access to many of the defensive boons, like stability, protection, resistance ect.

Conditions in and of itself alone are absolutely not the ROOT PROBLEN.The real root problem of this game is its 6 years long ignored completely outdated combat system mechanics, which aren't at all anymore in harmony with the taste of the game, and its added content that anet implmented over time to the game, which are all not part of these outdated gameplay mechancis and the overall initial game balance state that the game had at the begin for which thoser new added effects, e-specs ect were all not designed for around..

Anet follows sadly the thinking a it seems, that they can permanently add new mechanics, new conditions, new boons ect. to the game, without ever thinking about it, that they need also to change and adapt and to rebalance the old initial gameplay mechanics they are using from the games combat system...

You cant add permanently new mechanics to a combat system and expect from the old mechanics of dsaid combat system, that they keep on running always perfectly fine and balanced together with all the new added mechanics, as if nothing has been changed or added at all.When combat effects get too much and everythign gets to spammy, then its wiser to REDUCE the amount of effects to compress the amount of effect spam to the lessest number possible, to help this way making balancign the game again easier, than to continue addign always only new things to the problem...

This is like somebody making himself a coffee who keeps on adding then after that permanetly more and more sugar to the coffee, that knows not when the point is reached, where you should better stop adding more sugar to the coffee.Somewhen is simply the point reached, where you have no drinkable coffee anymore, but just only a cup full of sugar that you can't drink anymore ...

[saerni.2584]

Why the same people continue to post the same debunked ideas year after year boggles the mind.

If condition damage is uniquely mitigated by cleanse and resistance, and power damage by toughness and protection/weakness then adding condition damage reduction to toughness makes removal of cleanse necessary. You can’t just pretend toughness unfairly ignores condition damage without admitting cleanse is also one-sided mitigation going the other way.

This is a big change to force on a game that lacks the development resources to reinvent a core gameplay mechanic just to satisfy a vocal minority of players who refuse to accept that cleanse is powerful mitigation. Complaining about reapplication is a complaint against scourge/Mesmer/profession specifically and not a reason to implement poorly thought out changes to the game design. Or, strangely, it comes from the expectation that multiple people landing their skills shouldn’t kill you. I’m sorry, but there is no reasonable expectation that three scourges/etc, even if nerfed to be underpowered, shouldn’t be able to kill you if their skills land.

My point is 1) complaints against condition damage are often exaggerated or based on demonstrably false claims, 2) “solutions” to condition damage are either calls to completely remove core game mechanics or redesign so much of the game as to be impractical.

[Oozo.7856]

"Either way, this has been a GW2 topic since the game released."

When the game was released poison and burning didn't stack, there was no such thing as torment and dire/trailblazers gear didn't exist. ;)

[Oozo.7856]

@"Hoodie.1045" said:Best way to "balance" condition damage:

Step 1: Nerf condition damage in PvP/WvW by 80-90%. Problem solved.

Now I can already hear the whines of the losers that can't be bothered to learn how to play their professions and rely too much on conditions. They'll go out of their way to defend it, saying that it requires skill when we all know just how BS that it.

Using conditions as utilities, like poison to reduce healing, weakness to reduce incoming damage, blind to not waste a dodge, chill to kite enemies, those kinds of conditions are fine. It's just sad that most players are just a bunch of spoiled brats that want instant gratification, they just want things to be given to them immediately so they can feel good about themselves without working hard to accomplish anything.

People that want instant gratification should play power thief or power mesmer and oneshot people coming out of stealth. I really don't think I'm working that hard when I steal for 3K damage into vault for 16K and instantly down someone coming out stealth.

Condition and power damage (from certain classes) are both broken in this game.

[Sigmoid.7082]

@"Oozo.7856" said:"Either way, this has been a GW2 topic since the game released."

When the game was released poison and burning didn't stack, there was no such thing as torment and dire/trailblazers gear didn't exist. ;)

Conditions were also completely irrelevant in almost every facet of the game.

[Oozo.7856]

@Sigmoid.7082 said:

@"Oozo.7856" said:"Either way, this has been a GW2 topic since the game released."

When the game was released poison and burning didn't stack, there was no such thing as torment and dire/trailblazers gear didn't exist. ;)

Conditions were also completely irrelevant in almost every facet of the game.

And then dire gear was introduced and several condition builds suddenly became top roamer and group builds. ;)

The dumbest thing though was letting burning stack (along with poison and torment). Dots should not be ticking for over 4K+ damage regardless of how much condition damage you have. It's stupid.

Actually, my memory was off a bit. Here is footage of a condition warrior before poison and burning stacked without dire gear. Looks pretty strong to me. That needed to be buffed? ;)

[Sigmoid.7082]

Clipped montages are anecdotal. Could find a video of anyone doing something similar on a power build its not really proof of anything.

You can use the winky face all you want doesn't change the reasons why those conditions were changed to stack.

Also if you get hit by several strong abilities why shouldn't you take large amounts of damage? Why is getting hit by 3 power attacks and taking 12k fine but getting hit with 3 strong conditions attacks and taking similar damage over 4-6 seconds , regardless of how high the ticks go, an issue ?

[Oozo.7856]

They were changed to stacks because of PvE, not PvP. Condition classes were more balanced back then than they are now. Power damage is also too high.

The main reason why conditions should be doing less damage is that power has to sacrifice a lot of survivability to do that kind of damage, while condition can build very tanky and still to lethal damage. Basically, condition builds are good for people who are bad at using their active defensive skills to avoid attacks. The big problem is when you have a good player running a high vitality and high toughness condition build that is good at using active skills to avoid attacks. That type of player is nearly unkillable 1v1 against most opponents.

[Oozo.7856]

@"Sigmoid.7082" said:Clipped montages are anecdotal.

Here is nearly 13 unedited minutes of a condition necro and condition healing support engineer

Again, this was before poison and burning stacked. Condition builds were fine in PvP before Anet went full r-tard with stacking conditions (which seriously broke PvP balance for the sake of PvE.

[Hyper Cutter.9376]

@"Oozo.7856" said:"Either way, this has been a GW2 topic since the game released."

When the game was released poison and burning didn't stack, there was no such thing as torment and dire/trailblazers gear didn't exist. ;)Dire was introduced about a year after the game launched (to replace one of the stats using Magic Find after that stopped being a gear stat), almost two years before they removed the stacking limits on conditions.

[Dadnir.5038]

@"Redponey.8352" said:Hi,I'll just bring some ideas to try balancing condition damage especially in WvW but even in PvP and maybe PvE

I want to be clear as possible. Actually condition is not the issue itself but the fact that Condition damage is based itself on 1 attributes (condition damage) and it doesnt really need other attributes to be efficient, so people are running robutness vitality and xx.

Ah... Another thread filled with misconceptions...

The Conditions damages a profession can dish out depend on 3 stats:

• Condition damage (which is obvious)
• Crit chance (because quite a few conditions are applyed on crit)
• Expertise (because the lenght of these condition need to be extended to reach a proper level of over time damage, else they disappear to quickly to even build some pressure)

The last condition balance patch clearly took these fact into account reducing intensity of damage by tinkering with the number of stacks applied by each stack and compensating this loss by a lengthen duration of each stack.

This way to play condition damage is breaking the balance between power and condition, because when you want to play power based build , you have to increase sufficiently precision and ferocity to be efficient, whereas condition damage doesnt need 3 attributes to be efficient. As we all know, robutness and vitality totally counter damage based on power coupled with

Playing soldier stat give you the same level of damage and protection than a dire condi build, the damages are just applied differently.

protection (buff) and food whereas robutness vitality and condition doesnt have real counter and playing condition doesn't need to be risky.

Here you touch the real issue which is the condition counterplay even if somehow you seem still full of misconceptions. There is counterplay to conditions. Be it resistance, food/runes that reduce condition duration on self, condi cleanse or even traits that reduce cndition damage received. There is undeniably counterplay to condition damages.

The issue would be more that it's not obviously built in your gear stats like it is for power damage. Initially, I believe that anet thougth that vitality was the counter to condition, however, this was something that might have been relevant pre HoT but it's no longer the case.

Ideally, the solution would be to give a condition damage resilience to toughness which would make power and condition damage even in regard of stats.

To try to change that without implementing new attributes (that would be a lot of work), condition damage may be decrease a lot on basic damage output and duration, and it would be increase a lot with ferocity and expertise (can be increase more than now). As ferocity apply as multiplicator of critical damage, it could be apply on condition damage.

That would be the worst possible solution because if you let conditions damage deal twice or more their initial effect it would be hundred time worse than the current situation, not for the condi build but for everyone on the receiving end.

Implementing that should change all the way, people are playing condition damage and running condition damage build will need more attentio^n but would be more rewardfull.

Another way to balance this it to re-update all runes or foods base on reduction of condition duration and double their reduction of condition, as they were before. because actually the maximum that we could have is -45% condition duration and i have tested it in WvW and PvP, that not enought to be efficient in thoses game modes. Because of the increase of this reduction, player that are running condition based build would but some expertise in their build to be efficient and decrease their defensive attributes as robutness and vitality.

Removing boon duration and condition duration foods from WvW might be a good solution, still condition damage seem to bother quite a lot of player in PvP as well without food so, I still think that rewrking toughness a bit to also reduce condition damages would be the "better" solution.

Thanks for you attention(sorry for my english)

[Aeolus.3615]

@Oozo.7856 said:

@"Sigmoid.7082" said:Clipped montages are anecdotal.

Here is nearly 13 unedited minutes of a condition necro and condition healing support engineer

Again, this was before poison and burning stacked. Condition builds were fine in PvP before Anet went full r-kitten with stacking conditions (which seriously broke PvP balance for the sake of PvE.

Game is not balance when people cant be carried, and gets amazingly balanced and fun when people start to be carried.Reason every body wants to nerfs other's classes w/o wanting to nerf some broken gameplay on theirs.Anet increased the spam rate of condis and made some skill stacking, but also made some classes to cleanse, imo balance here is not that condis are OP but the awfull skill design on some classes to complete carry casual players with it.

And when u want to make bad players look like good or top players while they are beign carried with some class, the real good players actually will be on AFK mode while playing that class.

Real problem are ANet dev's.. and who is doing the crappy balance iterations if they really have any.

[Redponey.8352]

All i remember that before we got great fight with stress and some strategy instead of pushing pushing and zerging

Some footage from Hardcore guilds but with casual guild we got the same stress's fight !! and it's was fun!! it was a great time :'(