Phineas Poe.3018

Protection/weakness go into play before the damage is taken, while condition cleanses go into play after the damage is taken. This. distinction. matters. One is active defense. The other is reactive. Outside of passive traits like Adaptive Armor, which was never really competitive with Final Salvo, there are really only two ways to actively reduce condition damage, and they're both kind of garbage: light aura and resistance. Resistance is fairly rare, and the only classes that really have ample access to it are revenant with demon stance and warrior. Resistance can also be stripped or corrupted like any other boon. Light aura is a bit less rare, but it's still pretty difficult to access it, as very few professions even get light fields/auras, let alone light fields that are worth slotting into their build alongside leap finishers. Light aura is also pretty terrible in that they opted to take away the vulnerability stacking in favor of condi damage reduction while leaving the retaliation -- an anti-power boon -- in place. To use the current dev team's favorite buzz term, Light Aura truly lacks a "purity of purpose" at the moment. And not only is light aura pretty difficult to get, but it isn't really all that powerful compared to the options provided versus power builds. Light Aura only reduces condition damage by 10%, whereas protection reduces power damage by 33%. Weakness furthermore halves the damage output of half their hits, and I can permanently sustain that on anyone through the E-Gun auto-attack, Tranquilizer Dart. Weakness also has the advantage of slowing their endurance regeneration, which means it can be used offensively and defensively -- a feature that Frost Aura similarly shares by both chilling enemies and reducing my damage taken by 10%. Condition damage is very obviously balanced on the basis of condition removal skills existing, which is why they're overwhelmingly more common and on every profession -- unlike resistance and light aura. Your ability to effectively counter condi builds is reliant on how many condition removal skills are on your bar; any assertion otherwise is just false. I'm amazed that anyone would even bother trying to argue otherwise, and yet here we are.

It's funny you say that when there are, in fact, many PvP builds that do not rely on access to protection. Some professions like thief don't even have native access to it. That's the funny thing about power metas that people in this thread keep trying to explain to you: power metas are usually a little more open to experimentation and diversity. But I'm glad you iterated this, because I think it's central to the main issue I originally voiced: all of these things you're talking about, like protection and weakness, are active defenses. What differentiates them from straight condi removal is that they're activated before the damage is taken. That's why fighting against power builds also generally ends up requiring a bit more perception and awareness than fighting against a condi build does.

If what you were saying was true then there would be no need for condition removal skills to be in the game. What?How do you get to that end exactly can you explain that?It's really not that complicated, man. If active defenses like blocks and dodges were equally effective versus condition damage builds as they are versus power damage builds, then there'd absolutely be no need to run condition removal skills on your bar or in your trait lines. But I think we all know that is simply not the case for two reasons: (1) there are unblockable condi skills like Corrupt Boon and (2) condi builds apply sufficient pressure oftentimes just by auto-attacking. This is the case in literally every facet of the game. Next to using Shrapnel Grenade and Blowtorch off cooldown, it's Incendiary Powder and Incendiary Ammo that always carried some of the heaviest weight in the condi engi damage rotation in raids. You used to actually be able to walk up to someone in PvP with Incendiary Ammo activated and 100-0 them from stealth before Napalming their downed corpse and invuln-stomping them with Elixir S. We did this for years. To do as they suggested, to "try playing against condition builds the same way you do power builds," would get you absolutely trashed. I have no idea who either of you are or what ratings you tend to play in, but there historically have only really been two real counters to boon-strip/condi necro: run a ton of condi cleanse in your build or simply don't rely on boons. Unfortunately, for some classes, like elementalist and engineer, the latter just isn't really an option; this is why for literally this game's entire existence necromancer has been the kryptonite to both those professions and always emerges as a meta profession any time elementalist or engineer climb on top. It happened with cele rifle, it happened with d/d cele, it happened with p/p HGH, and it happened with both scrapper and tempest. You used to be able to win 1v1s against necromancers as an engi by effectively dodging Plague Signet and Feast of Corruption and by meta-gaming their automatic 3 condi transfer through the pistol, but nowadays there's just nothing you can really do. Between HGH and the hammer auto you're just pumping out too many boons to effectively control it from being corrupted, and there's so many different conditions flying around all the time that your traits are activating and deactivating without much active involvement. Heart of Thorns brought a lot of changes to the game that -- to many veterans -- both bloated APM while simultaneously dumbing down the combat, and there's not really a better representative of that change than how condition damage builds have shifted from 2015 onwards. If my comments still don't make sense to you, then I guess it will remain a mystery for you. Maybe one day these words will mean something to you. And if not, oh well.

If what you were saying was true then there would be no need for condition removal skills to be in the game.

You literally asked me: "Have you tried playing against condition builds the same way you do Power builds? You know, dodging, blocking, blinding?" Dodging, blocking, and blinding are not as equally effective versus condi builds as they are versus power. If that was the case, no one would have to slot any condition removal skills on their bar. You came into this discussion trying to defend a completely absurd talking point, and you still feel the need to misconstrue my statements: I never said any of that, actually. In fact I said quite the opposite. What I actually said is that condi builds are really effing boring to fight against. I never found condi builds difficult to counter. I have no idea how it is for holosmith since I just bought PoF like last week and haven't yet touched it, but as a scrapper you literally just ran both Elixir C and Purge Gyro versus mesmer/necro heavy teams. You could even stand in thief death blossoms all day. The class was already braindead enough to 1v2 at far all game long; handling a condition mesmer or thief 1v1 wasn't that difficult. Either have the respect to respond to what I actually write or just don't reply at all. Thanks.

Of course not. You don't play against every class exactly the same way, let alone play against power builds the same way you do against condi builds. You have to change out utility skills and your approach on the basis of who you're facing. And if you seriously think blinds, blocks, and dodges mitigate the majority of condition damage the same way they mitigate the majority of power damage, you must have stopped playing PvP in 2015 when pistol/pistol HGH and boon strip necro were the high profile condi/celestial builds. We are very far removed from the days where just dodging an engineer's Blowtorch or a necromancer's Plague Signet would single-handedly win you 1v1s. Condition builds these days are relentless by comparison, and both mesmer and necromancer just have access to too many condi applicators these days to bother slotting additional blocks or blinds into your build. You gain significantly more mileage just putting 1-2 condition cleansing skills on your bar. You definitely want to dodge as many shatters as you can, but the truth is that mesmers reapply conditions much faster than your endurance bar will refill. Your best defense is literally just activating Purge Gyro every 25 seconds, like I said before.

Not really. Power damage works very differently from condition damage skills in the sense that it promotes more active play: how active or preemptive a player you are, the better your outcome. It promotes using aegis and blocks before you get attacked. It promotes using stealth and gap creators to creatively avoid taking damage. And it promotes using things like blind fields, weakness, and frost aura to help mitigate damage. If you don't do these things, you are at a disadvantage. While it's very true that some of these things can equally mitigate the attacks of condition damage, the problem is that condition damage skills don't effectively punish players for making mistakes or playing passively. As a scrapper I can stand in wells and traps all afternoon so long as my Purge Gyro is active. I can let a necromancer corrupt every boon on my bar and then immediately convert them all into boons with Elixir C. There is no punishment because all I have to do is press a button on my bar to counteract all the damage that was about to be done to me. It's not interesting to me. If I have the necessary condition removal skills on my bar, the condition damage becomes frivolous. It's a game mechanic that's there purely to exist as a check, like an enrage timer. It's similar to standing in line at a theme park and sizing yourself up; am I tall enough to be on this ride? Or, more specifically, do I have enough condi cleanse to sustain a 1v1 versus a condi mesmer? For 2 years or so that was pretty much always the case. Mesmers would mash their condi skills, and I would mash my condi removals. There was always an ebb and flow dependent on whose cooldowns were up, but there were never really any surprises. To make matters worse: because my buildcrafting would always be tunnel-visioned based on how many condi classes were on the opposing team, I was disincentivized to try new/different things like running blast gyro, extra kits, or gadgets. Based on your posting history and your attitude in this thread, it's pretty clear that you're a fan of condition damage and/or feel the need to defend it. I respect that you enjoy the way condition damage builds play, but you have to understand that the majority of the player base really does not. You can see that on the basis of how WvW has gone down in population over the past 2 years. You can see that on the basis of how raiders generally reacted to condition damage creeping into the meta. And you can see that on the basis of how people respond to your own comments in this thread. Condition damage is just really not that fun to play or fight against.

But that's precisely the problem, isn't it? You press a button, so I press something else in response to it. How is that engaging gameplay? It's a completely reactive system: conditions get loaded up only to be washed away. The only counter to condition cleanse is just piling on even more conditions. It's build wars. It's an arms race. It's not fun to me. It's not fun to many people. Instead of using the wealth of unique skills the engineer is offered that might help diversify gameplay, I'm just stuck using Elixir C or Purge Gyro when faced with condi spam. I just press buttons. Boring.

If mesmer damage is overtuned, it will be nerfed. But I don't personally enjoy the condition meta when it's active in PvP or WvW. I don't like the way it plays, the way it forces people to build, or even the way it looks. It just turns combat into a total mess of condis and boons filling up the screen, and it turns GW2 into a rotation-based combat system. I think activating Purge Gyro on cooldown is just about the least inspiring way to play the engineer, and it's exactly what drove me away from this game pre-PoF release. I'd much rather die because I messed up a dodge or two than die because my class/build just doesn't have enough baked-in condition removal skills. Sorry for typos, I am writing on my phone.

This is a huge change, and I think it's the right one. World vs. World has largely been in a point of stasis since 2015; there have been very few server shake-ups after the WvW tournaments ended, and the player population -- while seeing major upticks in certain quarterly updates -- has dropped off significantly following the releases of ArcheAge, Black Desert, and Elder Scrolls Online's own revival. This is precisely the type of thing Guild Wars 2 needs to do to help differentiate itself from the rest of the RvR games on the market -- both those already released and those incoming. Having a guild-based server system to this scale, in my mind, has never been attempted before; Crowfall's numerous variants in rule sets are probably the closest to this type of system you're implementing, and even then you have the upper hand of an already-established community to build this system off of. There's reasons to be excited for this both as a Guild Wars 2 fan and as an MMORPG fan. I appreciate you taking the risk.