Rebalancing Direct and Condition Damage

[Einlanzer.1627]

edit - I meant for this to go in general as this is not specific to PvP. Sorry about that!

 

Currently, condition damage outperforms direct damage almost universally. Ele power-based Weaver is still really good, and a couple of power builds such as Staff Daredevil come close to being competitive, but most power builds just don't do that well in the current game.

 

I don't disagree with Karl in the AMA that, in the context of optimized builds, condi damage should slightly outperform direct damage due to the nature of damage over time. However, in the AMA, Karl only discussed the drawbacks of condition damage and not the benefits. This is a pretty glaring oversight, because condi actually carries a few fairly large benefits:

 

a.) it deals damage passively. This means it's usually easier to "set up" and allows you to focus more on defense and utility while dealing damage, which is a pretty huge advantage in GW2's active combat system

 

b.) the weight of each attribute within condi builds is different from physi builds. While condition damage can utilize a greater number of attributes, **Malice** (Anet, it's time to formally revert the name for both flavor and clarity in communication) always carries disproportionate weight, which affords condition builds a bit more flexibility. You can fully optimize your damage with Viper stats, or you can add in some extra defense or utility without sacrificing nearly as much damage potential as burst builds do. IMO, this is a huge problem - especially because, if anything, it should be the opposite - burst builds really need this flexibility more than condi builds do since they have to stay engaged to apply pressure.

 

c.) condition damage is not affected by passive defense, which is a great way to ensure that it's better than burst builds in some situations and worse in others (highly armored vs. glass), but this is not taken advantage of currently - instead, condition damage is pretty much always better unless the fight is really, really short. **It's easy to conclude that condition damage is over-tuned by simply observing that it typically outperforms direct damage even against glass builds & low defense enemies, which makes no sense whatsoever.** What's the point of toughness & armor, exactly, when condition is the meta because it's almost always better? Condition damage should be significantly better against high toughness/armor, while being slightly weaker against low toughness/armor

 

 

 

So what sort of solutions can we come up with?

 

**First,** I think Anet needs to baseline direct and condition damage around specific benchmarks. I'd start with this:

Calculate optimized condi damage against optimized physical damage, and then try to benchmark about a 15% difference vs. average toughness/armor. Based on armor values, there should be a roughly 30% variance from there. So, against the glassiest enemy imaginable, power would be about 15% better, and against a really tough enemy, condi would be about 45% better. The current scale of burst vs condi builds is not _anywhere near_ this spectrum of variability. They also need to broaden out the base defense of a lot of enemies in PVE.

 

**Second**, I think that Anet needs to spend significant time rethinking the allocation and roles of some the attributes in the game. Personally, I'm a fan of at least exploring the notion of combining Precision and Ferocity into one attribute. Thematically, they don't really deserve to be separate, and doing this would get us out of the Berserker mentality once and for all, allowing direct damage builds to have the flexibility that condition builds currently have - incorporating support or defense choices without completely undermining their output. This would give them an opportunity to revisit and touch up the different attribute combos available on gear. I would probably advocate replacing Ferocity in some cases with the profession specific attribute that is currently unavailable on gear for no good reason (yes, Revenant needs one still).