Why not reduce max stacks?

[Cifrer.6013]

When I see most people complaining about X being OP or Y being UP it generally comes down to stacks of boons, i.e. might, stability or conditions, i.e. poison, bleed.

If the big issue people are having is that TTK is too short, why not consider reducing the cap on max stacks?
If they dropped the cap from 25 to say 20 or 15 bursts wouldn't hit as hard and I would presume that the defensive boons wouldn't be quite as defensive either.

Couldn't this be a way to reduce the overall power creep without needing to make as many individual adjustments?

I could see some adjustment to some defensive boons or abilities being needed so that bunker doesn't become unkillable. That's about the only issue that comes to mind off hand for me though.

So tell me, what am I missing here? It can't be just that simple so I must have some sort of incorrect presumptions or thoughts.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

i think youre right about both boons and condis - they all should have their stacks and max durations nerfed. ive brought this up before in the wvw forum and the general consensus was that it wouldnt fix underlying problems. its a damn good start though, and i think it would be good for the game if both this and some blatantly op traits / skills were brought in line.

[Crinn.7864]

Unless you put the max condi stacks at like 8, a condi cap isn't going to do anything. None of the meta condi builds will typically have more than 10 of a given condi applied at a time. What makes things like condi thief, condi mes, and condi scourge strong is that they blast you with a large quantity of debuff condis while also applying the damaging ones. Essentially you get killed by being perma blind/weakened/crippled. The raw damage output of the meta condi builds is more or less on par with meta power builds with condi mirage being the only real outlier.

Putting a cap on boons is even more silly as only might and stability have stacks to begin with.

[Cifrer.6013]

So the thought is that it's not how hard the conditions are hitting you, it's the fact that they're covered by non-damaging conditions so you can't cleanse them?

I mean, blind or cripple aren't contributing to damage, yet condi-burst builds can kill people quite quickly. Most of the complaints seem to be not just condi, but power as well, so this ties into the boons, or at least specifically might. As for the boons, capping might would reduce the damage of both condi and power builds on the top end while still leaving their base damage untouched. According to the wiki most duration type boons are capped at 5 with a few exceptions.

I think I understand what you're getting it, I'm just trying to seek further clarification and explanation is all.

[Blocki.4931]

The more damage you take out of the game the more annoying to kill everything becomes. I don't want to have even more issues playing against bunker builds that just keep healing to full

[Dadnir.5038]

@Blocki.4931 said:The more damage you take out of the game the more annoying to kill everything becomes. I don't want to have even more issues playing against bunker builds that just keep healing to full

I wouldn't have told it like that but, in essence, that's the correct answer to the op question's.

@ OP,Anet don't want it's PvP dominated by bunker, they got a difficult balance history in GW1 with unending match due to potent healing and tanking ability. That's why, as much as possible, anet want it's PvP to be fast pace without longlasting fights. This imply hard burst and fast deaths.

[Arheundel.6451]

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Blocki.4931 said:The more damage you take out of the game the more annoying to kill everything becomes. I don't want to have even more issues playing against bunker builds that just keep healing to full

I wouldn't have told it like that but, in essence, that's the correct answer to the op question's.

@ OP,Anet don't want it's PvP dominated by bunker, they got a difficult balance history in GW1 with unending match due to potent healing and tanking ability. That's why, as much as possible, anet want it's PvP to be fast pace without longlasting fights. This imply hard burst and fast deaths.

You mean GW2 history....in no reality GW1 should be compared to GW2...it's like blasphemy

[Dadnir.5038]

Even GW1 had trouble for skill balance. Thought there were a lot more skills to balance yet their individual balance had a lesser impact on the game compared to all the GW2 mechanisms that badly need rework.

And no, I meant what I said, GW1 PvP had a real issue with healers leading to neverending matchs. And this is what anet fear the most for GW2 PvP. They do not want fight to end up easily in a stalemate, they favor winners to be decided quickly.

[Vague Memory.2817]

They did have a lower cap at one time and then they increased it again for PvE. But I do find that certain classes can generate certain stacks too quickly into the 20's. Vulnerability is one that rangers and engis can pile onto you quickly.

[Swagg.9236]

Cap it at 5, and you might make a difference. Not only will a 7+ stack of any condi quickly melt anybody's HP pool, but it's not like any condition class puts only one main stack of conditions onto a target. Scourge and Mirage, for instance, will easily stack at least 2 respective condis onto a target in very short order. If you want "damage over time" to actually mean "damage over time," then 5 is the max cap.

The only real issue is that conditions have NEVER DONE ANYTHING INTERESTING aside from just raw damage. Since they're often slapped onto autoattacks and almost every outgoing damage source in some way, the line between "condi utility" and "direct power damage" is rendered effectively nonexistent to the point that GW2 could easily get along entirely without conditions (if it's all just damage, anyone could just adjust damage numbers, remove conditions and get along with straight attacks; PvE wouldn't lose anything, and PvP would most likely be a lot better off). While it's one thing to make condition damage into true "damage over time," the biggest fault with condition damage is just how they don't do anything interesting; they're just damage.

This is evident in how launch GW2 had plenty of "condition options" which nobody took in PvP or PvE. In fact, GW2 has always been so shallow that meta GW2 PvE for nearly a year after release was 1 Warrior/2 Guardians/2 Elementalists: a whole 3 out of the total 8 classes. That's just bad design at work: 5/8 of the classes in the game were utter bloat given how they basically just did what the other 3 did except to a lesser degree. The only time that conditions became "valuable" is when they were just turned into "damage." They didn't gain any utility and they never had any interesting dynamic to begin with: anet just broke conditions and broke the limiter on their damage.