Can we please talk about Conditions, Resolution and game balance once more in the competitive scene?

[Zyreva.1078]

52 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

It's a warrior with cleanses on 5s swaps, swap sigils and cleanse on burst.

The warrior does not run defense traits, so no Cleansing Ire. Just Mending, Shake It Off and cleanse on swap (trait + sigil) which is pretty standard for warrior.

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Condi overall has two major issues since HoT [...]

And yet even pre HoT we had the exact same complaints about condis. Guess things haven't actually changed  that much after all ...

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 Dire just puts out so much more damage than Soldier.

That's actually not true in general. With certain setups soldier builds can dish out surprising amounts of dmg, because you can get a good chunk of crit chance and crit dmg from traits, runes and sigils (+ base crit dmg is 150% anyway). It is just not commonly used anymore, because power builds don't need the defensive stats and gain so much more from offensive stats. There is a reason why zerk is perfectly viable and even meta for many builds, while something like viper or sinister sucks in comparison. Stacking condi dmg (the stat) and expertise is far less effective, in particular if you factor in cleanses. Stacking power, precision and ferocity (+ a good chunk of dmg modifiers) scales way better. It isn't even close.

Edited January 5, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Gotejjeken.1267]

22 hours ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

You know what happens if you try to block/dodge/blind after getting hit by power burst? Well, you probably don't, because at that point you are already dead. But if you do get a chance to still press your buttons, they do exactly as much as they do vs condis (except with invuln skills that can actually prevent condis from dealing dmg after getting hit).

 

And entangle is a bad example, because the skill itself is unblockable, so ofc it will hit a blocking target. That has nothing to do with power or condi. Dodge it or blind it and it does nothing, no bleeds (which are the least scary part about that skill), no roots. And SoS/EP aren't anywhere close to old resistance. Short duration/long cd, self only, no stacking, can't be shared and extended unlike boons such as resistance. Ridiculous comparison. But by all means, nerf those skills and the only class that gets hurt is warrior (definitely deserves some nerfs, yes, so op!), because ranger has much better defensive skills anyway.

 

I've literally never been one shot by a power burst and have never seen it unless it's something known broken like engi stealth grenade bomb.  Even then, most people run ridiculous defenses so one shotting is reserved for meme'ing people off warclaws.  

About entangle, if it is blocked it only won't trigger on the blocker---the rest will still fire for anyone else in range.  Same thing with blind..if you think that's incorrect go try it in a camp where guards have a lot of blind attacks; you can cast entangle while blind and it will hit on second tick.  

Also lol @ ranger having better defensive skills than warrior.  Ranger may have better mobility (if entirely specc'd to run), but not better defenses.  

Anyway, not sure what any of this has to do with the point that old resistance is pretty equal to the power defenses that still exist in the game.  Sure, it could be shared but so can 'hate bubbles'...not to mention many classes puking out protection, etc. boons.  There's also enough barrier going around to make conditions pretty useless as well.  

Edited January 5, 2022 by Gotejjeken.1267

[Shiyo.3578]

On 1/4/2022 at 10:25 AM, Yasai.3549 said:

But on the other hand, small scale or 5v5 has been utterly ruined by the passive nature of Conditions killing builds who cannot match their cleanses against the Condi output rate. 

Are we even playing the same game? If there is a single support, they PASSIVELY remove conditions off of everyone in AOE and you cannot deal any damage with conditions at all.

Condition builds are utterly useless outside of 1v1, and unbearable to fight 1v1.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Shiyo.3578

[Yasai.3549]

5 hours ago, coro.3176 said:

The issue is that power is just always the best choice. It's better in zerg fights, or in any fight with support. It's at least equal in a 1v1, so you have the choice between condi (situational, huge downsides), and power (always good).

So I bristle at OP's suggestion that condi needs to be nerfed even further for some reason..

I didn't suggest Condi nerfs tho?

I suggested Resolution buffs or reworks.

 

God if you can see that as a nerf, I don't know how entitled you must feel.

[coro.3176]

On 1/4/2022 at 7:25 AM, Yasai.3549 said:

What I'm asking for isn't immunity but this: 
Resolution reduces Condition damage by 33% 
Resolution also prevents additional Conditions to continue stacking on the target
Resolution now is a stack based Boon similar to Stability. Blocking an instance of damaging Condition from applying will remove one stack. 

Sure looks like a nerf to me. Not only will I have the same trouble getting my conditions to stick, but now if my target has resolution, I won't be able to put on any more *and* it'll reduce the precious little damage I'm already doing by 33%.

I already can't apply enough conditions to overwhelm my opponents' cleanse. Now I need to apply enough to overwhelm their cleanse AND punch through their resolution? Eff that!

[Yasai.3549]

2 minutes ago, coro.3176 said:

Sure looks like a nerf to me. Not only will I have the same trouble getting my conditions to stick, but now if my target has resolution, I won't be able to put on any more *and* it'll reduce the precious little damage I'm already doing by 33%.

I already can't apply enough conditions to overwhelm my opponents' cleanse. Now I need to apply enough to overwhelm their cleanse AND punch through their resolution? Eff that!

What kind of Condi build are you playing anyway? Most Condi builds stack a Condition on Auto and that will remove 1 stack, so just kite and Auto then. 

 

The only thing you will have issue with is Supports but Supports have been an issue forever and you generally do not go hunting Supports anyway.

[coro.3176]

11 minutes ago, Yasai.3549 said:

What kind of Condi build are you playing anyway? Most Condi builds stack a Condition on Auto and that will remove 1 stack, so just kite and Auto then. 

 

The only thing you will have issue with is Supports but Supports have been an issue forever and you generally do not go hunting Supports anyway.

That's asking a lot. Landing 2 or 3 autoattacks is huge in a pvp situation. That's multiple seconds of autoattacking just to break even. Again, I'm ALREADY fighting an uphill battle vs just playing power and deleting my opponent in one combo the FIRST time they screw up. Now I have to tag them with condi between their defensive skills, probably do that 3 or 4 times until they've burned all their cleanse, THEN if they have resolve, I have to apply EVEN MORE condi after that?

Oh, and all the while I have to worry about my own survival because they're attacking me back.

Eff. That.

Edit: Again, see example:

I land about 8 solid condi bursts here at very close or point blank range. My opponent lands maybe 2-3 solid attacks of their own. Imagine if my skills didn't do condi damage, but instead did power and I was specced for power. My opponent would just be dead.

Edited January 5, 2022 by coro.3176

[Yasai.3549]

6 minutes ago, coro.3176 said:

That's asking a lot. Landing 2 or 3 autoattacks is huge in a pvp situation. That's multiple seconds of autoattacking just to break even. Again, I'm ALREADY fighting an uphill battle vs just playing power and deleting my opponent in one combo the FIRST time they screw up. Now I have to tag them with condi between their defensive skills, probably do that 3 or 4 times until they've burned all their cleanse, THEN if they have resolve, I have to apply EVEN MORE condi after that?

Oh, and all the while I have to worry about my own survival because they're attacking me back.

Eff. That.

See this is the entire problem of "Condi Bursting" 
I've never agreed with Condi Bursting as a viable playstyle anyway. And what kind of Condi player doesn't pepper their autos to upkeep Condis, then proceed to complain that Condi is too weak and doesn't pressure opponents. 

Good Condi players always apply Condi constantly, or for Necro's case, just corrupt everything cos ggez. 
If you are playing a build that relies on Condi Bursting then you deserve to get countered, especially against Supports who cleanse your entire burst in 1 second. 

My suggestion is specifically targeting how Condi is generally played, which is constant application and those few builds that can puke out 3 - 4 stacks of Condis every other second. Others have mentioned that it's a trait thing that needs balancing across all these builds, but I feel that it will be a better measure to buff or rework Resolution instead of simply increasing the damage reduction or reverting back to immunity. 

Again, if you see it as a nerf, I don't know what to say. Most builds don't even have access to wanton applications of Resolution anyway. 

[Chaba.5410]

I still don't see how changing resolution is going to address whatever the issue is supposed to be.  Still sounds more like L2P issue or enabling poor builds rather than Anet targeting balance changes towards overpowered builds.

Edited January 6, 2022 by Chaba.5410

[Zyreva.1078]

4 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

I've literally never been one shot by a power burst and have never seen it unless it's something known broken like engi stealth grenade bomb.  Even then, most people run ridiculous defenses so one shotting is reserved for meme'ing people off warclaws.  

I didn't ask whether you get oneshot or not. Fact is, everything that prevents you from getting hit works exactly the same vs skills that apply primarily conditions and skills that don't. If there are exceptions (eg unblockable) those are skill specific, not condi or power specific. There have been a few cases of condi applications ignoring defenses and those have been fixed fo the most part as far as i'm aware. There might still be some bugged instances left, but it's just that - an uncommon bug that does not have any major impact on balance.

4 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

About entangle, if it is blocked it only won't trigger on the blocker---the rest will still fire for anyone else in range.  Same thing with blind..if you think that's incorrect go try it in a camp where guards have a lot of blind attacks; you can cast entangle while blind and it will hit on second tick.

That's not how Entangle works. The entire skill is unblockable. Blocking it does nothing. Blind however causes the skill to miss on any potential target in range and the vines won't spawn at all. If you land the skill, spawn the vines and then get blinded, the vines will continue to apply dmg and immob, because at that point it's the vines hitting the target, not you (and those are afaik still immune to conditions and therefore can't get blinded). And again, all this has nothing to do with how conditions interact with defensive moves. It is all very specific to this one skill in particular.

4 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Also lol @ ranger having better defensive skills than warrior.  Ranger may have better mobility (if entirely specc'd to run), but not better defenses.

I didn't say ranger has better defenses than warrior (it still think it has btw), i said it has better defensive skills than SoS.

4 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Anyway, not sure what any of this has to do with the point that old resistance is pretty equal to the power defenses that still exist in the game.  Sure, it could be shared but so can 'hate bubbles'...not to mention many classes puking out protection, etc. boons.  There's also enough barrier going around to make conditions pretty useless as well.  

Yea, a boon that can be kept up nearly permanently on an entire grp is totally compareable to 3s of immunity every 40s for a single player. But thanks for confirming that overall sustain and boons are more of an issue than condis.

[coro.3176]

8 minutes ago, Yasai.3549 said:

See this is the entire problem of "Condi Bursting" 
I've never agreed with Condi Bursting as a viable playstyle anyway. And what kind of Condi player doesn't pepper their autos to upkeep Condis, then proceed to complain that Condi is too weak and doesn't pressure opponents. 

Good Condi players always apply Condi constantly, or for Necro's case, just corrupt everything cos ggez. 
If you are playing a build that relies on Condi Bursting then you deserve to get countered, especially against Supports who cleanse your entire burst in 1 second. 

My suggestion is specifically targeting how Condi is generally played, which is constant application and those few builds that can puke out 3 - 4 stacks of Condis every other second. 

That is not, in fact, how condi is always done. Not every build can just "puke out 3-4" stacks every second (again, if you have specific examples you think are overtuned, then name them). For high impact skills with long cooldowns (like engi offhand pistol), it's a delicate game of 

1. landing the damaging condi in the first place (must actually hit the opponent between their defenses)
2. land cover condi, desperately try and overwhelm their cleanse so that when they try and cleanse the original damage, it removes the cover condi first but not the damaging condi
3. do NOT reapply the original damaging condi if you can help it. This moves it to the front of the condi stack and makes it first to be cleansed. very bad news if you want your damage to tick out
4. repeat many times

So forgive me if I don't agree that that "is how condi is generally played". If you pay attention, many other builds are doing similar things with their condi. It's not just spam.

Edited January 6, 2022 by coro.3176

[Gotejjeken.1267]

25 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

vThat's not how Entangle works. The entire skill is unblockable. Blocking it does nothing. Blind however causes the skill to miss on any potential target in range and the vines won't spawn at all. If you land the skill, spawn the vines and then get blinded, the vines will continue to apply dmg and immob, because at that point it's the vines hitting the target, not you (and those are afaik still immune to conditions and therefore can't get blinded). And again, all this has nothing to do with how conditions interact with defensive moves. It is all very specific to this one skill in particular.

 

Just a point on Entangle..it most definitley can be blocked; see:

Entangle - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W)

"Despite the tooltip, the initial attack of skill can be blocked, and if it is blocked, the vines won't be spawned on the blocking foe."

Blind most certainly does not cause the entire skill to miss on anyone in range--as mentioned before been blinded many times by camp guards (warclaw dismount into the middle and hit entangle, most times will get blinded first), and it still entangles as it is supposed to.

Anyway, yes boons are problematic but that's only in response to prior nerfs on conditions (confusion, torment, etc.) which then made resistance a bit too strong.  As we all know each balance patch breaks something so they go and break something else to compensate.  

Edited January 6, 2022 by Gotejjeken.1267

[nativity.3057]

46 minutes ago, coro.3176 said:

That's asking a lot. Landing 2 or 3 autoattacks is huge in a pvp situation. That's multiple seconds of autoattacking just to break even. Again, I'm ALREADY fighting an uphill battle vs just playing power and deleting my opponent in one combo the FIRST time they screw up. Now I have to tag them with condi between their defensive skills, probably do that 3 or 4 times until they've burned all their cleanse, THEN if they have resolve, I have to apply EVEN MORE condi after that?

Oh, and all the while I have to worry about my own survival because they're attacking me back.

Eff. That.

Edit: Again, see example:

I land about 8 solid condi bursts here at very close or point blank range. My opponent lands maybe 2-3 solid attacks of their own. Imagine if my skills didn't do condi damage, but instead did power and I was specced for power. My opponent would just be dead.

 

Just CC him, then he can't cleanse 

 

[Zyreva.1078]

1 minute ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

Just a point on Entangle..it most definitley can be blocked; see:

 

Entangle - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W)

 

"Despite the tooltip, the initial attack of skill can be blocked, and if it is blocked, the vines won't be spawned on the blocking foe."

The wiki isn't always 100% correct (it also states the skill applies vuln - which isn't true either). I've always been using Entangle against blocking targets, because it is the easiest way to actually land it (since players usually don't dodge when they are blocking).

1 minute ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

Blind most certainly does not cause the entire skill to miss on anyone in range--as mentioned before been blinded many times by camp guards (warclaw dismount into the middle and hit entangle, most times will get blinded first), and it still entangles as it is supposed to.

I does. I did actually test it on camp guards, just to confirm. Blind = miss. Period.

 

[Alcatraznc.3869]

On 1/6/2022 at 11:27 AM, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Blind most certainly does not cause the entire skill to miss on anyone in range--as mentioned before been blinded many times by camp guards (warclaw dismount into the middle and hit entangle, most times will get blinded first), and it still entangles as it is supposed to.

 

Try with a slow projectile at range like Engineer's mortar kit. Shoot it and while the projectile is in the air, ask someone to blind you. You will miss your attack. 

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

metabattle is a joke page, who even uses that crap lol

[Shiyo.3578]

On 1/5/2022 at 6:46 PM, coro.3176 said:

That's asking a lot. Landing 2 or 3 autoattacks is huge in a pvp situation. That's multiple seconds of autoattacking just to break even. Again, I'm ALREADY fighting an uphill battle vs just playing power and deleting my opponent in one combo the FIRST time they screw up. Now I have to tag them with condi between their defensive skills, probably do that 3 or 4 times until they've burned all their cleanse, THEN if they have resolve, I have to apply EVEN MORE condi after that?

Oh, and all the while I have to worry about my own survival because they're attacking me back.

Eff. That.

Edit: Again, see example:

I land about 8 solid condi bursts here at very close or point blank range. My opponent lands maybe 2-3 solid attacks of their own. Imagine if my skills didn't do condi damage, but instead did power and I was specced for power. My opponent would just be dead.

This video is so good at showing how absolutely TERRIBLE GW2's combat is. Nice job.

[Shroud.2307]

On 1/5/2022 at 7:05 PM, coro.3176 said:

That is not, in fact, how condi is always done. Not every build can just "puke out 3-4" stacks every second (again, if you have specific examples you think are overtuned, then name them). For high impact skills with long cooldowns (like engi offhand pistol), it's a delicate game of 

1. landing the damaging condi in the first place (must actually hit the opponent between their defenses)
2. land cover condi, desperately try and overwhelm their cleanse so that when they try and cleanse the original damage, it removes the cover condi first but not the damaging condi
3. do NOT reapply the original damaging condi if you can help it. This moves it to the front of the condi stack and makes it first to be cleansed. very bad news if you want your damage to tick out
4. repeat many times

So forgive me if I don't agree that that "is how condi is generally played". If you pay attention, many other builds are doing similar things with their condi. It's not just spam.

Tbh I think a lot of people complain about Condi's for two reasons;

1, In zergs, it isn't uncommon to survive a weak bomb but to come out with a bunch of Condi's that end up downing you. People that complain about Condi's for this reason only see what downs them and blame that.

And 2; Mirage, Thief (in general), Herald/Renegade, and Necromancer/Scourge.
Mirage is pretty well a minefield that drops a bunch of small stacks on you from every which direction that can ramp up very quickly.
Thief can Steal and instantly drop several Condi's on you, but it has very poor sustained Condi application so it tends to be easy to counter if you have a Cleanse prepared.
Herald and Renegade when using Mallyx, and Rene with Shortbow especially, have extremely high Torment pressure that is very easy to bury with junk Condi's. Tormenting Runes also make them incredibly sustainable so long as they aggress.
And of course Necro is just good at turning peoples Boons against them. Scourge doesn't have very good Condi pressure on its own, but the more Boons you have the more ammunition you give it.

Everything else is pretty weak outside of 1v1's. Condi Warrior and Ranger (this includes elite specs) are quite good duelists and can be very difficult to pressure in outnumbered fights, but are still terrible in groups and have their share of losing matchups in 1v1s. Other things like Condi Engi, Ele, etc. are all on the weak side due to cast times, necessary sacrifices with traits/utilities, or just generally low pressure.
Any complaints people have with specific Condition builds can be attributed to only a small handful that could be considered good in their niche.

As for ways to mitigate or negate both Power and Condition damage, lets compare.

Power
Toughness, Vitality, Protection, Weakness, Aegis, Blind, Dodge, Block, damage reduction Food/Traits/Utilities
= 9

Condition
Vitality, Resistance, Resolution, Blind, Dodge, Block, Cleanse, damage reduction Food/Traits/Utilities
= 8

Although Power has more things working against it, it is also more versatile and cannot be as readily "removed" like Conditions can. Yes, you can heal it and especially in groups that will happen, but at least it can deal damage at all where as Conditions often don't get a chance to tick. If you get killed by a bomb it is always going to be Power damage doing it, Conditions are only going to get you if you survive it and have nothing left.

There are absolutely discrepancies between the two, but people need to stop talking like Conditions and Condition builds are an actual problem. Just because some of them are obnoxious roamers, and like, two have any validity in group fights above 15 v 15 doesn't mean Conditions need to be nerfed across the board.

Also I just want to add that I very frequently roam around with one cleanse from Cleansing Sigil and it is literally enough to deal with the vast majority of Condi builds. A good Condi Mirage or Druid might screw me sometimes, but that's about it.
As for zerging I really don't think anyone can rightfully say that Condi's are an issue there if they're in a squad. If you're not getting any support and you're just tagging along for the ride, it's on you to know your limits. ANet can't nerf everything that's a threat just because some people don't take responsibility for their actions.

Edited January 9, 2022 by Shroud.2307