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Condition / CC Burst Potential


nthmetal.9652

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Thank you for this patch, though I think you missed the mark in quite some points. By a lot. YMMV, but yesterday I had the joy to try out how old and new builds worked together. And I've seen quite some fights, and interestingly quite some one-pushes in zergs against each other. Actually that was mainly what I saw, but I did not join the big blob vs blob fights. So I don't know how things worked there.

What I often saw, outside that was this though: Two zergs would move closer to each other, trying to lure out the bomb. So far so good. Standard behavior. And then you'd try to find a good moment to engage. And one side would get caught up in a large amount of CC and condis. Due to being stuck in a sea of red, there was little chance getting out thanks to recuded stunbreak, while CC was not similarly targeted. And the condis quickly wore one side down.What especially bothered me is, once your skills are on CD, you touch the sea of red and it's basically immediately over.

From the patch notes:

Condition damage reductions are a bit less math-y, but we’re continuing to push conditions toward less burst potential by reducing the number of stacks and extending durations where it makes sense. Some of this is handled on the skill level, and we’re also making heavy reductions to traits that apply conditions on hit, on crit, or on other conditions being applied.

I dunno how it was for you, but for me I strangely mainly saw the opposite. Conditions did not create constant pressure, but instead they had burst potential. The change to CC doing next to no damage apparently also leads to some players specializing heavily in CC (which I also do, as it comes without cost. I'm on support anyways, so don't deal damage. Then I can as well slot as much CC as possible without giving up support). This combination really feels good if you do it to others. And feels bad if you are on the receiving end, as it actually locks you out from acting / reacting.What it looks like to me is that my whole status bar quickly fills up with all the condis. All of them. Your group cleanses and cleanses and the condis are still there

We want cooldowns to be felt. Longer cooldowns promote more calculated usage of skills; if skills are used poorly it should create an opportunity for the enemy to push their advantage. Shorter durations of high impact buffs have a similar effect. Skillful timing is going to be rewarded, and poor usage is going to be exploitable by enemies.

The combination of the cooldown changes combined with the shrtened duration of buffs and reduced cleanses / stunbreaks and passively triggered defensive abilities definitely makes the choice of when to spend cooldowns very palpable - I am not sure how well it translates to the feeling of rewarding skillful play though.In equally sized groups this might be true, however when you are outnumbered or outnumbering your enemies, the cooldowns of the smaller group are easily spent just getting through the first movement of encoutnering each other. Leaving the other group to bomb you freely or wear you down quickly with conditions.Mistakes are a lot more costly, so that despite recuded power damage,especially in group vs group scenarios, the damage is big and fight is quickly over.

Maybe other players can shed some light on how fights were when:

  • the combat was smallscale (duels up fto 5 vs 5 or 10 vs 10)
  • big groups, but no one outnumbering the enemy
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Pretty much. Some condi attacks just do too much. It would be different if everybody was spamming just burn/bleed/torment.

This was destined to happen. More and more people are spec'ing into condi builds because they escaped the nerfs. Supports are now outnumbered 3+-1 by enemy condi builds. Unlike having insufficient healing vs power, which just meant health bars dropping, not being able to cleanse makes fights absolute misery because of the huge variety of punishments conditions can bring.

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The class you choose to bring to WvW has a large impact here. Revenants (they lost stunbreak on legend swap + weak on cleansing to begin with), mesmers (low cleanse / if you go mirage you will be with 1 dodge), warriors have a problem depending on skills & traits but it's more so due to melee, if a guardian/firebrand isn't running cleanse utility then they're in for a hard time too , elementalists need to run water or arcane (the on dodge trait) to have decent cleanses , soulbeasts might have issues depending on traits. Core necro or scourge should have little issue.First few days I was on DPS scrapper but sword+dagger or staff daredevil (power) is fine too (due to cleanse on evade+utilities such as Shadowstep).

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