saerni.2584

Neither example actually touches on the core reason people say these things.Point is that there is 0 reason to afk in a match unless you bite the dust at that exact moment with your face on the keyboard. If you absolutely need to leave your keyboard, you log out and take the dishonor. It's the better option instead of letting your teammates suffer. So what is it like living in disney land? It's great. Mickey came over the other day, and brought some bourbon. Good times. Being serious though, people that complain about toxicness in PvP and then proceed to afk in matches are feeding that toxicness. The only way the toxicness stops is you as an individual deciding to not be toxic no matter what other people do. "I can afk because other people do it." No you can't, if you want those others to stop. You're feeding it. I may be an idealist but hey, atleast I'm not part of the problem. On the forums everybody is an idealist very nice guy pro skilled player, too bad none of them actually seem to play the game.Not sure that’s true. Plenty of people in matches I’ve been in play the game without complaint or raging. It’s usually one person out of 10 (on either team) who may rage and afk. There is a widespread feeling that people are toxic just because your odds aren’t great you will avoid everyone having a bad day or just inclined to afk when their team loses the first fight.

People will try to shame others into not afk’ing regardless. No one should afk but the incentives aren’t great. There isn’t a benefit for a close loss so people don’t feel the need to fight an obviously losing battle. There also isn’t a punishment for a massive loss so people aren’t trying to save their rating when their team is losing badly. Together, this makes it less likely that the good players (who can potentially make a difference) will fight hard, or try to teach their team to get better at rotations or targeting or general tactics.

This is silly. Most of those arguments apply to both power and condi. The problem is, you're viewing condition ticks as separate attacks. They are not. That's why you can't blind them. That's why they keep doing damage even when you're not in range or your opponent is dead or defending or whatever.Condi ticks are the damage from the initial attack that is being applied over time. Instead of thinking that you're getting hit by lots of free attacks for each condi tick, you should instead be thinking that you got hit by a huge condi burst and you are going to take the damage and maybe die unless you have some mitigation (heal, cleanse, resistance). They ARE the same argument, but in some cases the outcome is different. Why do people play condi scourge instead of power scourge? Because its what it lends it self to by design. Condi reaper was pretty much killed so it could live. Besides this is a silly questions. Its like asking why reapers play power instead of condi. Plus look at WvW. Why are most scourges there power/hybrid? Could it be that in zerg play cleanse is so abundant that condi is weak its near on irrelevant and its the only way to eek some damage out? But conditions are so strong why would they? I mean..I could just as easily ask why do people play power holo instead of condi holo? Conditions are so strong it would make sense to right? Why are the Condi forms always on bots? I've seen warrior, guardian, and revenant bots. They definitely were not condi builds. Since you seem keen on generalizing, answer this: of all 27 specs in the game, how many have a viable condi build in Conquest? Define viable in conquest. An interesting question. How about at least 33% of players at or above 1200 skill rating? That wasn't the question. The question was how many specs have a viable condi build. The answer is: not many. Maybe 3.5? Scourge, Mirage, Daredevil and Weaver(hybrid). The rest are largely unplayable even though they clearly had builds designed to be played as condi. Eg. condi ranger, condi engi, condi warrior...I was just addressing what level of play made something viable. A third of above average players using condi amulets seems like a reasonable threshold for viable. Is it good, top tier or best? Harder to say and personal skill matters here. The best players may be able to make many builds work but that doesn’t mean the builds they are running are the best for the rest.

This is silly. Most of those arguments apply to both power and condi. The problem is, you're viewing condition ticks as separate attacks. They are not. That's why you can't blind them. That's why they keep doing damage even when you're not in range or your opponent is dead or defending or whatever.Condi ticks are the damage from the initial attack that is being applied over time. Instead of thinking that you're getting hit by lots of free attacks for each condi tick, you should instead be thinking that you got hit by a huge condi burst and you are going to take the damage and maybe die unless you have some mitigation (heal, cleanse, resistance). They ARE the same argument, but in some cases the outcome is different. Why do people play condi scourge instead of power scourge? Because its what it lends it self to by design. Condi reaper was pretty much killed so it could live. Besides this is a silly questions. Its like asking why reapers play power instead of condi. Plus look at WvW. Why are most scourges there power/hybrid? Could it be that in zerg play cleanse is so abundant that condi is weak its near on irrelevant and its the only way to eek some damage out? But conditions are so strong why would they? I mean..I could just as easily ask why do people play power holo instead of condi holo? Conditions are so strong it would make sense to right? Why are the Condi forms always on bots? I've seen warrior, guardian, and revenant bots. They definitely were not condi builds. Since you seem keen on generalizing, answer this: of all 27 specs in the game, how many have a viable condi build in Conquest? Define viable in conquest.An interesting question. How about at least 33% of players at or above 1200 skill rating?

Lotus Blossom is a specific trait. Deadly Arts is a specific trait. Want to complain about those traits? Take it to the thief forum. Nothing about the above proves that condi is categorically an issue.

You could use Skelk Venom for your heal and then use DE and Payback. You then get 20% cooldown reduction per kill of NPCs marked by you. That with the Venom will help keep your allies alive with venom sharing.

“Passively” is a bit of straw man. If the trait pulses without me needing to do anything that is passive. But if it is tied to an actual ability (an active strike) that isn’t passive, at least any differently than other traits which boost power damage. For example, there are tons of traits with +% damage modifications or that add boons to certain skills. It’s no less passive to get might on critical hit than to add a condition on critical. And, as has been pointed out, condi as a system of damage is not less avoidable than power damage. Complaints should be specific to certain skills/builds/professions and not to some loose idea of “condi is the problem.” Which brings me to cleanse. Cleanse is more built into the game than toughness. You can’t build for zero toughness (there is a base value for armor after all). You can build for absolutely zero cleanse and you can’t do that and expect to beat a condition build without avoiding a significant number of attacks or healing a significant amount of HP. Not because condi is somehow too easy to apply. Rather, because it is balanced around some trait or skill or gear being used to cleanse some of the hits you take. In that sense condi is harder to fight if you either don’t take cleanse or have lots of active cleanse which require more personal effort to activate. Anti-condi passive builds (lots of condi defense in the background) probably won’t find condi categorically difficult because their defense doesn’t require them to think about it as much. That makes the game more interesting and dynamic because I might as well complain that, without taking mobility skills, I get chased down. Or that I don’t take projectile denial and got shot up at range. It’s part of the game and the only way to make my above point about passive versus active cleanse moot is to reduce cleanse to zero and rebalance condition application based on that. Oh, how all the condi-critics would complain then...

It will die down soon enough. CI Mirage inspired a lot of hate for a reason. I’m more interested in how Anet plans to rework the trait and others to get something less abusive in a PvP context. Weaver sustain is like Scrapper sustain. Decent in a 1v1 but vulnerable to a coordinated spike. I’ve been fighting and seeing such weavers in games for a long time. It is hardly worth a nerf let alone an emergency nerf. Holo is, ironically, potentially more durable than Scrapper in certain respects. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be spiked down or otherwise dealt with XvX. Thief is...I really don’t see how thief is now OP. A well played thief is a threat but so is any other mobility oriented DPS build.

I’ve noticed that thief damage isn’t low. It’s that opponents have a lot of mitigation. Once you get past that mitigation thief does kill opponents well enough. What most thieves need is it’s own sustain to stay in the fight. (Smoke Screen is a step in that direction).

and to the post Condis are great. Fire and forget.Reapply more fire and forget.Condis are much harder to avoid than obvious incoming melee damage swings. From the safety of range, many classes can fire and forget condi onto one player or a group of players.This is not the case for melee. The melee has to get to you first. And while movement abilities might be powerful on melee classes, good condi classes also have movement abilities. These are issues that condi players consciously ignorePower damage can oneshot from range. Your point?

“When dealing with condi burst...you don't have that luxury of stat protection because there is no stat that defends against condi dmg.” But there is condi cleanse which acts as a unique mitigation mechanic like toughness does for power. Cleanse can be active or passive (much like toughness can be temporarily boosted by certain utilities or traits and also is a passive feature of gear/amulets).

There are so many complaints about oneshot power attacks with minimal tells or high DPS power attacks with large AoE. There are even memes. It’s not like attacks that apply condi are uniquely AoE or hard to avoid. And all attacks can be launched from Stealth. Which applies equally to all attacks. And further because some people have suggested condi attacks have low animations. The biggest complaints are about scourge and Mirage. Both of which produce massive visual indications of their attacks. Those may be hard to avoid but so are power attacks from holo, warrior, thief, rev, guard, ranger. Many of which aren’t telegraphed or easily hidden by quickness or stealth.

I’d say if you use Smoke Screen you can make Leeching Venoms work. If you don’t then Spider Venom is probably a better utility choice for the slot. Shadow Refuge is nice but the cooldown isn’t as good and you are better off using combos on Smoke Screen to enhance your stealth duration. But it should pulse initially upon entering stealth. That wouldn’t be too op but would make it more usable.

I’m always willing to share but as I’m still refining post patch (busy) I will hold off for now. I’m always willing to share what I’m currently using if you whisper me in game :)

Most of the people quitting had their build nerfed. I’ve never felt that my build had to stay 100% static and never tried to play someone else’s idea of a meta build. Why? Because playstyles are different and the meta didn’t reflect my play style, or how I have fun. So I am fairly positive. CI Mirage is a “new” (not really) condi build that is hard for some builds and compositions to fight against. But it’s not a team fighter and that makes it possible to fight. Contrary to popular forum opinion Mirage has been nerfed a number of times already and likely will be again in the future as more “trade off” patches are implemented. As to population, only Anet can speak to population levels and what people are playing. If you have a lot of mirages in games both sides likely have them. Visual spam aside facing a mesmer in a team game is usually an advantage for the side that learns to focus gank the mesmer.

If I'm not misstaken ; Executioner isn't a power-specific trait. It works for both as it's Damage mod. Other trait in that slot is just so much stronger for condi.To me the issue is that dodge is the mechanic that counters Power, players are taught to dodge through out the game. However the mechanic of condi- cleansing, I'll call it condi-management, isn't taught until you enter PvP. Bad players (myself included) might know howto dodge, but managing condis and doing my damage is harder. There are more players who know howto dodge, than there are players who know howto do condi-management. Condi attacks are also dodgeable (and blockable, and reflectable). They're also cleanseable, resistable, and negated by invulnerability if you fail with any of the first options. Which type of attacks have more counterplay between direct (power) and condition? Condi has more counterplay. And that is part of my point. When I fight against power, I need to dodge. When I fight against condi I need to do what I do against power, but also condi cleansing.To try put it into an example;If a quicktime event (wiki/Quick_time_event) type of game used buttons "X, Y & Z", and we consider these to be counterplays to what the game does. Then increasing the buttons to "x, y , z , a, b, c" puts more pressure on the player to deal with.I assume that better players accepts the extra "hoops" to jump through and have no issue with it.Imagine if they gave the thief trait Impacting Distruption (Pulmonary Impact) to spellbreaker, you'd have the opportunity to counterplay by stowing your casts if you are about to get stunned. It wouldn't make it easier though. (It would be broken, but it would have counterplay). "When I fight against condi I need to do what I do against power, but also condi cleansing." No. If you did what you do against power (e.g., dodge, block, reflect, invuln), you don't need to do anything further because you will have avoided the condition attacks completely, just like any power attack. Every condi attack is an avoidable attack just like power (direct damage) attacks. Condi attacks can be avoided in the first place just like direct attacks. On top of that, if you fail to avoid them in the first place you can still mitigate them with a number of other options. These options aren't necessary if you avoid them in the first place. To use your quicktime event analogy, a direct damage event can only be passed by pressing X, Y, Z. A condi event can also be passed by pressing X, Y, Z. But if that fails, also with A, B, C. There are simply more options for dealing with conditions. They have more Think of it this way. Power is mitigated uniquely by toughness. Condi is mitigated uniquely by cleanse. Everything else mentioned, and protection/resistance as a pair mitigate both.

I’d like to see a ratings system that incentivizes everyone to play until the end of the game. I’d like to see a rating system where, even if you lose, your team can celebrate not losing as badly as they might have. I’d like to see a rating system with reverse elasticity. The more games you play the more elastic your rating is (but not as big as current start of season elasticity. At the start of the season you can gain a little rating or lose a little rating as people play lots of games. Then, as you approach the number of games needed to place on the leaderboards (for entire season) your elasticity increases to force top players to choose between staying on the leaderboard by continuing to play and winning or not playing and letting the lower ranked players increase their ranks and kick “top rated” players out of the leaderboard. I’d like to see a leaderboard for the Professions based on players most played profession that season. Most of all I’d like to see some monetization aimed at PvP players so Anet can justify spending money on developing these features and more. It’s easy to see why Anet makes the content it does, because people buy gems for it. If only pvp had something optional (non-competitive) to help Anet fund PvP development we might actually have more PvP game modes, maps and features.

If I'm not misstaken ; Executioner isn't a power-specific trait. It works for both as it's Damage mod. Other trait in that slot is just so much stronger for condi.To me the issue is that dodge is the mechanic that counters Power, players are taught to dodge through out the game. However the mechanic of condi- cleansing, I'll call it condi-management, isn't taught until you enter PvP. Bad players (myself included) might know howto dodge, but managing condis and doing my damage is harder. There are more players who know howto dodge, than there are players who know howto do condi-management. Damage modifiers are specific to power damage. For a condi specific modifier see Potent Poison.

But in that context three stacks of poison for 3 seconds every five seconds isn’t going to come close to killing you. There are other abilities that are hitting you doing the bulk of the damage. There are plenty of power damage traits that are always on. And many of them transform power attacks in ways that turn even auto attacks into deadly damage. That’s why I think it’s a bit misleading to blame auto condi application traits when power has many “passive” traits that are always on. A comparison would be possible if Executioner (+20% below 50% target HP) only applied to three attacks with a 10 second cooldown, but that just isn’t the case. Power trait passives are all over the game leading to the meme “just dodge” in response to images of certain builds criting for 4-5k on every ability and up to 30k on “telegraphed” hits. This isn’t somehow only applicable to “condi builds.” More on the general topic: Condi builds are viable in two very different ways. First, high application with low reapplication. This is the “spike” that most would associate with mesmer and necro builds. Second, lower application with higher reapplication. This type will overwhelm cleanse if the target doesn’t avoid being consistently hit. Fewer builds of this type are viable because it takes time for this kind to work and time to kill is so low that sticking around in a fight long enough for this to work is generally not a good trade off from power or condi damage spike. When it comes to the “OP” condi builds they have a lot of AoE condi application that makes it hard to avoid being constantly hit with more attacks that apply condi. Scourge with multi AoE that apply cripple. CI Mirage with multi dazes and immobilizes ensuring more condi loading skills/clones hit. That those builds are effective with condi damage doesn’t make condi OP. It just means those particular crowd control aspects make fighting those builds a struggle.

Unblockable projectiles. Ranged Non-projectiles. Resistance with melee attacks. There are clear counters and Smoke Screen is less easy to hide than Black Powder. Still, a welcome buff to an under used skill.

Even the Odds is a great combination of bonus from might and extra damage from vuln.

To make it easier: Hide the basic stats and generate new top stats that reflect combinations of top stats that also reflect negative top stats as suggested above. Examples: Deadly (Top Damage and Kills)Durable (Top Damage Received and Top Personal Healing)Indomitable (Top Defense and Least Deaths)Unstoppable (Top Offense and Most Kills)Executioner (Most Finishers and Least Deaths)Escape Artist (Most Damage Received and Least Deaths)Paragon (Most Revives and Least Deaths)Golden (Top Offense and Defense, with Least Deaths and Most Kills)

My build? Seems pretty usable from what I can tell. I can’t speak to other builds being viable but I think a fair number with the new utilities might contend for viability. I spent a while working on refining my gameplay so I’ll try to record something “soon” now that I’m almost adjusted.

Seal Area is good. But having a combo field is better at least 1v1. Deadly Arts changes are positive overall. It doesn't state it but Seal Area is a dark field btw.Interesting. I’d still prefer a smoke field but that’s obviously a build specific choice. I’d like to play around with the new Merciful trait using Smoke Screen and blasts to AoE stealth and help res. But I’m constrained by wanting more stealth and the cooldown reduction.

Seal Area is good. But having a combo field is better at least 1v1. Deadly Arts changes are positive overall.