Anet doesnt like Power classes. Its Condi all day long.

[Blumpf.2518]

After reading the Notes for the upcoming Balance patch, im thinking that anet just dont likes people playing a power class.

The reason is quite simple, its the traits that gave bonus to stats.

Spotter +100 Precision

Empower Allies +100 Strength

Assasins Presence +150 Ferocity

Pinpoint distribution +100 Condition Damage

Banners +100 Strength/Precision/Ferocity/Condi Damage

 

Now you could say, that Condi classes lose 200 Condition Damage, but in reality almost no one plays with pin point distribution, so its only -100 Condi Damage cause Banners are gone.

Now on the other side, spotter, assasins Presence and empower allies are used quite often.

 

And worse, Condition DPS skales linear while Power DPS does not.

For Condition its, lets say, Bleeding x Condition Damage Bonus x Condition Duration.

Duration is almost always 100% = 1, so its the Condition Inflicted x Condition Damage

 

Now for Power its Skill Damage x Powerbonus x Critchance x Critical Damage

And the Patch just removed 200 Precision, 200 Strength and 250 Ferocity.

 

Lets take a typical Power class for example:

Before Patch: 3000 Strength, 100% Critchance, 250% Critdamage. Multiplied: 3000 x 1 x 2,5 = 7500

After patch: 2800 Strength, 95% Critchance, 235% Critdamage. Multiplied: 2800 x 0,95 x 2,35 = 6251

6251 / 7500 = 83%, so power DPS would lose about 17% Damage.

 

Condition on the other Side, loses a lot less Damage, cause they only lose 1 important stat instead of 3.

Typical Condi Player has about 1800 Condition Damage. Now if you lose 100, thats 1700 / 1800 = 6,5 %

 

Now while its a good thing to remove traits like empower allies, spotter and the banner bonusses, the bad thing is, that this patch fails to compensate the lost stats.

They tried it with improved fury which now gives 25% instead of 20%, but thats not enough. 21 Precision is 1% Crit in GW2. Spotter + Banners = 200 Precision, so thats 9,5% lost, while improved Fury gives 5%. For Warriors its even worse, they lose 250 Precision = 11,9% Critchance.

Anet also improved traits that give an improved critchance and for some classes, like engineer, they work, cause theyre in the right traitline. But for other classes they dont, cause they put em in Traitlines no one will really play while doing endgame content like Raids or Strikes CMs.

 

Lets take the Warrior. Power warri always had Problems having 100% Critchance, thats why many use Rune of the Thief which gives 300 Precision, but still needed Spotter and Banners to get there.

Now with Spotter and Banners gone and the improved Fury Trait being in the ARMS Traitline its really hard to reach 100% Critchance.

As Warrior you still need the Disciplin Traitline, cause improved Axes and Bonus Adrenalin. Next Thing you need is the Strength Traitline, cause not having it, is such a big DPS loss, its not worth playing warrior without Strength  traits.

This means, that when playing an Elite specc, you have Elite+Strength+Discipline = no Arms traitline, no improved Fury.

What you COULD do is play Core Warrior with Strength+Arms+Discipline, but its quite questionable if this could reach the DPS output of other speccs.

 

What anet shouldve done is, just leave the +critchance traits as they were and instead make Fury 30% instead of 25%. Or raise the base critchance that every character has from 5% to 10%.

But, fixing the critchance problem with traits, works only when they are in the right traitline. If they are in a traitline, that no one who plays power DPS uses, they dont help at all.

[Fueki.4753]

We have known for a long time now that Arenanet is pushing condition damage, while not caring much about power.

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

The reason is on the leaked notes. Dude is a sucker for simple stuff, power takes quite a bit more skill so it's a no-no. Just be glad there is still weapon swap since dude doesn't use it too.

[CelestialCat.6240]

The problem with power is it is to simple an easy for one to make their individual attacks hit 5,000 or and even get to having individual single hit attacks hitting 15,000+ damage per hit. Often this is done while offsetting the absurdly high dps with some gimmick or exploit for defense allowing they to not only kill any player in no more the 2 seconds but solo legendary bosses. This leads to a flood of players submitting bug reports and tickets reporting that player as a cheater and or hacker giving Anet more work. On the flip side a condi player has to stack multiple conditions often leaving them open for a counter attack that can be countered easily by another player or a champion level boss.

 

I think Anet would rather players working together then any one player class soloing everything I  the game while giving them a mountain of reports to read and act on.

Edited June 26, 2022 by CelestialCat.6240

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

7 hours ago, CelestialCat.6240 said:

The problem with power is it is to simple an easy for one to make their individual attacks hit 5,000 or and even get to having individual single hit attacks hitting 15,000+ damage per hit. Often this is done while offsetting the absurdly high dps with some gimmick or exploit for defense allowing they to not only kill any player in no more the 2 seconds but solo legendary bosses. This leads to a flood of players submitting bug reports and tickets reporting that player as a cheater and or hacker giving Anet more work. On the flip side a condi player has to stack multiple conditions often leaving them open for a counter attack that can be countered easily by another player or a champion level boss.

 

I think Anet would rather players working together then any one player class soloing everything I  the game while giving them a mountain of reports to read and act on.

Le power build: hit abc skill > deal 3000 damage > don't dodge enemy attack > get downed.
Le condi build: hit abc skill > apply 7 different condies that will bleed, torment, cripple, confuse, chill, burn, poison> don't dodge enemy attack > get hit for 300 damage.

[Gajex.2386]

Meanwhile power mech gets some buffs.

Gotta join the Borg now, I guess.

[Hotride.2187]

11 hours ago, Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

The reason is on the leaked notes. Dude is a sucker for simple stuff, power takes quite a bit more skill so it's a no-no. Just be glad there is still weapon swap since dude doesn't use it too.

Yeah I counted, should be using 3 skills on axe/torch, 2 on utils (assuming not a qcfb, just a cfb) and 4 in tome (spammed in quick succession every 15 sec or so). So using 9 skills off CD (10 if you count entering the tome zzZzzZzZ). Could easily make this into a mobile game tbh. Not to say that a weapon swap to scepter/torch would add much more complexity.

It actually makes so much sense when I look at the fb changes over the last 3 years. Especially the mantra change.

Edited June 26, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Alcatraznc.3869]

I think Anet has a trauma from the beginning of GW2 when condition used to have a maximum stack of 25, burning and poison could only extend the duration of the condition applied while everyone was running full berserker. 

 

We didnt had expertise nor sinister so the closest we could do as far as condition damage goes is power/vitality/condition damage and in the case that a berserker player apply a condition like burning, your own burning would never apply and it would just extend the duration of the burn made by the berserk player. 

 

Looking at patches it was clear from the beginning that Anet want to push condition to be a viable choice the moment they removed the condition limits on bosses and allowed burn and poison to be stacked. And then they released Sinister, expertise stats, Viper and recently Ritualist. 

But as far as power goes we dont really have much option. We are forced to run power/accuracy/ferocity so 3/4 slot are already used. The only power related armour they released recently was Marauder and the one with concentration on top of berserk stat (sorry I forgot its name).

 

 

[Alcatraznc.3869]

11 hours ago, CelestialCat.6240 said:

The problem with power is it is to simple an easy for one to make their individual attacks hit 5,000 or and even get to having individual single hit attacks hitting 15,000+ damage per hit. Often this is done while offsetting the absurdly high dps with some gimmick or exploit for defense allowing they to not only kill any player in no more the 2 seconds but solo legendary bosses.

People hitting for 10k + are running full berserk. The moment they fail to dodge they can lose 5k on a normal hit from the boss if not more (if the boss crits I hope you were full HP and your base vitality is high).

And you are aware that IF there is a gimmick or exploit for defense, even condi player will do the same. I dont know why this argument is even there but whatever.

11 hours ago, CelestialCat.6240 said:

This leads to a flood of players submitting bug reports and tickets reporting that player as a cheater and or hacker giving Anet more work.

??? 

I've never seen someone getting reported because he soloed a champion or legendary, let alone because the player dealt 10k damage in a single hit. If I see someone soloing a legendary using full berserk, I would actually compliment the person because a single mistake on his part would lead to his death. Not so much for someone running condition.

11 hours ago, CelestialCat.6240 said:

On the flip side a condi player has to stack multiple conditions often leaving them open for a counter attack that can be countered easily by another player or a champion level boss.

Stacking condition requires no more skill than pressing the big damage button for berserk. And if you get hit, you dont care because you are most likely running something with toughness and vitality.

There's a reason why you see more people soloing champ/leg with condition rather than power.

11 hours ago, CelestialCat.6240 said:

 

I think Anet would rather players working together then any one player class soloing everything I  the game while giving them a mountain of reports to read and act on.

 

Then Anet should be nerfing condition and buffing power

[Buran.3796]

   Full power is just a worse choice:

* You need three stats to maximize damage (power, crit chance and ferocity) vs two stats (condi damage & expertise), which leaves less room to improve your defenses and utilities (vit, armor, boon duration).

* You usually only deal damage as power when you hit targets, and usually you can't do that while evading or blocking (albeit there's some exceptions as Unrelenting Assault) whereas condi builds keep doing damage while defending, so you just have to land your burst.

*After the core game, creatures in further expansions (specially in HoT) have really big armor values which largely diminish power efficiency, whereas condition damage is armor piercing ammunition: kills everything ignoring defenses.

*On top on that burns are really bursty: my trailblazer Willbender can stack 36+ burns so fast and deliver so much damage that can kill a veteran awakened abomination before it raises the shielding that reflects damage...

   But nothing wrong about, in my opinion: condi builds are fun. What ANet should  do isntead of nerfing conditions and making the game LESS FUN is buffing power and recovering some of the damage lost when the cc skills got nerfed to death (specially at WvW/PvP).

Edited June 26, 2022 by Buran.3796
typos

[LKEY.9567]

On 6/25/2022 at 12:55 AM, Blumpf.2518 said:

After reading the Notes for the upcoming Balance patch, im thinking that anet just dont likes people playing a power class.

The reason is quite simple, its the traits that gave bonus to stats.

Spotter +100 Precision

Empower Allies +100 Strength

Assasins Presence +150 Ferocity

Pinpoint distribution +100 Condition Damage

Banners +100 Strength/Precision/Ferocity/Condi Damage

 

Now you could say, that Condi classes lose 200 Condition Damage, but in reality almost no one plays with pin point distribution, so its only -100 Condi Damage cause Banners are gone.

Now on the other side, spotter, assasins Presence and empower allies are used quite often.

 

And worse, Condition DPS skales linear while Power DPS does not.

For Condition its, lets say, Bleeding x Condition Damage Bonus x Condition Duration.

Duration is almost always 100% = 1, so its the Condition Inflicted x Condition Damage

 

Now for Power its Skill Damage x Powerbonus x Critchance x Critical Damage

And the Patch just removed 200 Precision, 200 Strength and 250 Ferocity.

 

Lets take a typical Power class for example:

Before Patch: 3000 Strength, 100% Critchance, 250% Critdamage. Multiplied: 3000 x 1 x 2,5 = 7500

After patch: 2800 Strength, 95% Critchance, 235% Critdamage. Multiplied: 2800 x 0,95 x 2,35 = 6251

6251 / 7500 = 83%, so power DPS would lose about 17% Damage.

 

Condition on the other Side, loses a lot less Damage, cause they only lose 1 important stat instead of 3.

Typical Condi Player has about 1800 Condition Damage. Now if you lose 100, thats 1700 / 1800 = 6,5 %

 

Now while its a good thing to remove traits like empower allies, spotter and the banner bonusses, the bad thing is, that this patch fails to compensate the lost stats.

They tried it with improved fury which now gives 25% instead of 20%, but thats not enough. 21 Precision is 1% Crit in GW2. Spotter + Banners = 200 Precision, so thats 9,5% lost, while improved Fury gives 5%. For Warriors its even worse, they lose 250 Precision = 11,9% Critchance.

Anet also improved traits that give an improved critchance and for some classes, like engineer, they work, cause theyre in the right traitline. But for other classes they dont, cause they put em in Traitlines no one will really play while doing endgame content like Raids or Strikes CMs.

 

Lets take the Warrior. Power warri always had Problems having 100% Critchance, thats why many use Rune of the Thief which gives 300 Precision, but still needed Spotter and Banners to get there.

Now with Spotter and Banners gone and the improved Fury Trait being in the ARMS Traitline its really hard to reach 100% Critchance.

As Warrior you still need the Disciplin Traitline, cause improved Axes and Bonus Adrenalin. Next Thing you need is the Strength Traitline, cause not having it, is such a big DPS loss, its not worth playing warrior without Strength  traits.

This means, that when playing an Elite specc, you have Elite+Strength+Discipline = no Arms traitline, no improved Fury.

What you COULD do is play Core Warrior with Strength+Arms+Discipline, but its quite questionable if this could reach the DPS output of other speccs.

 

What anet shouldve done is, just leave the +critchance traits as they were and instead make Fury 30% instead of 25%. Or raise the base critchance that every character has from 5% to 10%.

But, fixing the critchance problem with traits, works only when they are in the right traitline. If they are in a traitline, that no one who plays power DPS uses, they dont help at all.

My brother in Kormir, you forgot the Frost Spirit (Sun Spirit is to not that big of the deal for Condi, though).

Anyway, ANet plays favorites and wants us to play condi builds because it is way easier to mantian dps in PvE while you can be tanku (Trailblazer, Celestial). Power builds are per se more difficult and rely much more on the buffs/boons.

[AliamRationem.5172]

I feel like part of the problem is the magnification of power damage.  It has much weaker damage at baseline than conditions do, but when you stack full offensive gear with % damage traits and boons it deals as much or more than conditions and delivers that damage in a significantly smaller window of time.

This creates a wide gap between optimal builds, comps, rotations, etc. and everything else.  It also drives the poor return on offensive stats for condition builds (why take power stats when the damage you gain is often less than the additional defenses, dodges, etc. you require in order to survive?).

Maybe if they brought the baseline up a bit, reduced some of the modifiers, and nerfed condition damage to compensate for the additional power damage you might see the balance shift a bit more toward power while also allowing somewhat more defensive power builds without sacrificing so much and somewhat less defensive condi builds in order to achieve better damage?

[Stx.4857]

Problem 1)  condi only needs two stats to deal damage, power needs three.  Meaning condi builds will always be much tankier.  This issue is made even worse due to there being no power/prec/ferocity/toughness (demolisher) gear in the game for some reason.

 

Problem 2)  Condi has burst too...   one of the supposed strengths of power damage vs condi is that you can burst harder.  Well thats just not true..  most condi builds have a rotation to deal insane burst stacking lots of burning or something else.  You would think that power damage would be more spiky and condi damage more consistent but condi gets to double dip here at least for some classes.

 

Problem 3)  There are far more anti power damage variables in the game.  Mob armor, weakness, protection...   those kill your power damage.  What does condi have to deal with?  Mobs as far as I know don't have resolution and rarely cleanse condis.  I've ran into a few that cleanse or convert condis to boons but those are extremely rare.

[Alcatraznc.3869]

9 hours ago, Stx.4857 said:

Problem 1)  condi only needs two stats to deal damage, power needs three.  Meaning condi builds will always be much tankier.  This issue is made even worse due to there being no power/prec/ferocity/toughness (demolisher) gear in the game for some reason.

Yeah there is no reason for Anet not to release this for PvE and WvW. It would opens up a lot more power build to be viable for OW.

9 hours ago, Stx.4857 said:

Problem 2)  Condi has burst too...   one of the supposed strengths of power damage vs condi is that you can burst harder.  Well thats just not true..  most condi builds have a rotation to deal insane burst stacking lots of burning or something else.  You would think that power damage would be more spiky and condi damage more consistent but condi gets to double dip here at least for some classes.

Condition takes a few more second to "burst" vs power. Like if I apply 20 stack of burning I would need to wait a second for the tick to proc the burn damage whereas power damage like Warrior axe F1 would happens the moment I press the key. Hardly matters in most encounter for PvE.

 

But that "burst condi" only happened because burning can now be stack on intensity and duration but also because some spec are now able to apply a tons of stack at once. 

9 hours ago, Stx.4857 said:

Problem 3)  There are far more anti power damage variables in the game.  Mob armor, weakness, protection...   those kill your power damage.  What does condi have to deal with?  Mobs as far as I know don't have resolution and rarely cleanse condis.  I've ran into a few that cleanse or convert condis to boons but those are extremely rare.

 

The thing that is supposed to counter condition is vitality. But while it may work for PvP content, in OW/instanced content all legendaries/champion have high HP by default on top of their armour. As far as I know there arent many encounter (if any) where the mob has a crap tons of HP but no toughness, in which case power damage would actually be better than condition.

[Fueki.4753]

2 hours ago, Alcatraznc.3869 said:

The thing that is supposed to counter condition is vitality.

This argument literally makes no sense in the Power vs Conditions discussion.

Both kinds of builds have to go through the same enemy HP, so it "counters" Power damage just as much as it "counters" Conditions.

[Puck.3697]

On 6/25/2022 at 4:42 PM, Fueki.4753 said:

We have known for a long time now that Arenanet is pushing condition damage, while not caring much about power.

Tbh upto this patch (won't know if it was still remain til after they hit) 

Power has still been the meta build for pros, even in scourge firebrands and renegades today they couldn't do the bosses as fast as power builds on alot of runs. 

However less organised teams or lower skilled players will benefit from condi alot. And I think largely that's what they're going for. Condi raid set ups are easier to play therefore more accessible. 

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

This argument literally makes no sense in the Power vs Conditions discussion.

Both kinds of builds have to go through the same enemy HP, so it "counters" Power damage just as much as it "counters" Conditions.

Doesn't conditions actually counter both vitality and toughness? Like, they ignore your Defense and they also reduce value of Health and Healing unlike power.

[Alcatraznc.3869]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

This argument literally makes no sense in the Power vs Conditions discussion.

Both kinds of builds have to go through the same enemy HP, so it "counters" Power damage just as much as it "counters" Conditions.

 

If you face an opponent with let's say a million toughness and 100k HP, power damage will do nothing whereas condition will just kill it faster because it ignores toughness.

 

So yes this is kind of relevant.

 

12 minutes ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

Doesn't conditions actually counter both vitality and toughness? Like, they ignore your Defense and they also reduce value of Health and Healing unlike power.

 

Only poison reduces the healing by 33% (effect does not stack on intensity). Condition straight up attack your vitality regardless of your toughness. 

[Mungrul.9358]

14 hours ago, Stx.4857 said:

Problem 3)  There are far more anti power damage variables in the game.  Mob armor, weakness, protection...   those kill your power damage.  What does condi have to deal with?  Mobs as far as I know don't have resolution and rarely cleanse condis.  I've ran into a few that cleanse or convert condis to boons but those are extremely rare.

There's also the interesting decision to make NO mobs immune to condi damage, so you can burn fire elementals, electrocute air elementals, freeze water elementals and bleed earth ones (as extreme examples).

I can see why they made that choice; often times in RPGs, when you've built your class around one type of condition or another, it's massively frustrating to come across creatures that are immune to your damage.

 

But traditionally, this is what party dynamics have been for; your thief can't stab skeletons, because they're immune to piercing damage, but your warrior can bludgeon them to (un)death with a mace, club or warhammer.

 

And this highlights one of the core problems ANet face when trying to balance an ostensibly mutiplayer game which is mostly played solo by a majority of the players.

How do you implement logical damage systems without ostracising your players, because your build system is too inflexible to allow users to change their build effectively on the fly?

This is why allowing gear to influence build through stats (outside of protection for armour and damage for weapons) is always a massive mistake in RPGs.

[Alcatraznc.3869]

There arent many bosses that are immune of X or Y. In fact destroyers mob for instance are immune to burning if I'm not wrong but their bosses are not. 

[Fueki.4753]

2 hours ago, Alcatraznc.3869 said:

If you face an opponent with let's say a million toughness and 100k HP, power damage will do nothing whereas condition will just kill it faster because it ignores toughness.

So yes this is kind of relevant.

Your argument is about Toughness reducing Power damage, not about health being relevant to the damage types.

Both Power and Conditions have to burn the same number, thus how much HP an enemy has is irrelevant to the discussion of whether condition damage gets the number quicker to zero, or Power damage.

1 hour ago, Alcatraznc.3869 said:

There arent many bosses that are immune of X or Y. In fact destroyers mob for instance are immune to burning if I'm not wrong but their bosses are not. 

If I remember correctly, only core game Destroyers are immune to burning.

The other Destroyers should burn just fine, since Arenanet has been pushing conditions since Season 3, if not earlier.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Fueki.4753