Weakness Needs an Overahaul

[ArthurDent.9538]

Currently weakness is an extremely strong condition in pvp game modes against any players that rely on power critical damage and/or high dodge up time, however against any pve foe that has a break-bar it is next to useless. This massive disparity means that balancing skills that apply weakness across game modes is impossible because weakness is so much stronger against other players than it is against pve bosses. Currently weakness gives a 50% chance for a glancing blow which does half damage and cannot critically hit, additionally it reduces endurance regeneration by 50% which is strong enough to nullify vigor, against a break-bar it only does 20 damage per second, these things need more parity.

 

For a reference on how strong the damage reduction of weakness is, on a power herald in wvw I can build for 100% crit chance and around 200% crit damage. This means that half my hits will do normal damage, and the other half of my hits will do 1/4 of their normal damage since they lose 50% flat damage from the glancing blow and then they are halved again by no longer gaining critical damage. That is on average a 37.5% damage decrease which is extremely strong. The worst part about this massive damage reduction is how random it is with its affects. Say you are about to be hit by an 8k eviscerate, however weakness is applied; there is a 50% chance that the eviscerate will hit for the full 8k damage and there is a 50% chance that the hit will be glancing which will result in only 2k damage, all you can do is pray to RNGsus or burn a dodge on a potentially 2k eviscerate. Having a hit that can do 8k damage or 2k damage dependent solely on the flip of a coin is insane. The end result is that a single stack of weakness is stronger than 25 stacks of might plus vigor which is too much for one condition, considering how worthless it is against foes with break-bars.

 

My proposal is making weakness a parallel to vulnerability, it will stack up to 25 stacks with each stack reducing out going damage by one percent. This has the dual benefit of allowing weakness to be useful against break-bar foes, while also removing the infuriating rng aspect of the damage reduction. Access to weakness will need to be adjusted across the board as most classes can't even maintain one stack of weakness permanently on their own. Additionally all enemies with break-bars should have their base damage increased a bit to avoid power creep. Lastly I can't say whether weakness should or should not affect condition damage like how vulnerability now does. Currently condi builds are nearly immune to weakness damage reductions, and it may be best to allow condi builds to maintain this advantage, testing is required on anet's end to make that decision.