Curse

rii · Jul 28, 2005, 10:09 PM // 22:09

Ok, firstly, this isnt about pve, in which case i dont have a problem. This isnt about team arenas or competition arenas either, since you could run through it naked and noone would notice. This is about organized team vs organized team.

Conditions are often seen around these forums, i wont go and get the links but heres there was a build asking for information on health degen characters, and yukito likes his conditions, and there was that thread about what conditions are 'bad' for each class (a bit above me). Anyway, the point is that conditions are often used and considered useful. (i also meet a lot of people in tombs whose tactic is 'spread poison bleeding and disease over their whole team'.

How often do people actually die from conditions??? When I asked the conditioner how many people he kills when facing organized teams he replied that the point of condition was harassment and 'panic-inducing' :/.

I would like to argue that this is really really not true, and that in fact people should stop using conditions point blank.

Firstly, how many conditions actually are bad for you? bleeding, poison, disease and 'on fire' all do dot, cripple only really matters when your the last one alive (which doesnt matter.... when used in open combat you can switch targets to a less-moving person). deep wound is a short spike, weakness, dazed and blind are admittedly good shutdowns.

Firstly dots. at full degen your doing 20dps.
That my man, is awful. Warriors hit 50-60dps before the guy is even running (in which the crits can hit it to 70-80), rangers can shock for 100 easily, and eles spike is through the roof. 20dps, is terrrrrrrrible. Of course, there is the point that once the 20dps is up its then easy to stack another 20 to make decent damage using the other half of your skillbar. but then, just get a warrior! This is mainly due to the next point:

Condition Removal
Im not going to treat you like children and list all of the skills that remove conditions, we all know theyre reasonably cheap and spammable (which is the best refutation so far) but i want to focus on one:

Mend Ailment
Energy:5 Cast time:1 Recharge: 2
remove one condition from target ally. That ally is healed for x-57hp for each remaing condition on them.

This is ludicrous! if i want full degen (were talking about conditions here) then ill need poison, bleeding and disease (4+3+4) = 11 actually, but 10 is the cap.
Thats the 20dps right there. Now, a mend ailment would (assuming 13 prot which i run as minimum on prot builds) thats 67 hp x 2 = 134hp. The next one is 67hp, followed by 0. O, you have df so make that 176hp, 109hp, and 42hp.
Thats a sum total of 327hp!!!! (yes, four exlamation marks)

At full degen you get 20dps, and to even match that sum total of healing (from the prot monk alone, not including what the healer has to say) the conditions have to remain (all three of em) for 16.35 seconds. However, thats at full strength, so lets take someone removing it in the most convenient order, bleeding first

time to match:
bleeding: 54.5seconds.
poison: 40.875 seconds
disease: 40.875 seconds.
posion/disease: 20.43 seconds
bleeding/poison: 23.35 seconds

well, im not going to continue, but from this one skill alone (not going into the details of martyr, can we see that conditions are not effective in any role, and if anything only serve to help people heal their teammates??

arredondo · Jul 28, 2005, 10:53 PM // 22:53

You're looking at it wrongly. I can take any damage dealing in the game, list a counter skill and wipe my hands of it. Hex Breaker with it's 5/1/5 stats punishes any Hex attempts for 50+ damage (and is instantly re-applyable once with no recharge). Can I now say all Hexes are "not effective in any role"?

Specifically with Conditions, how can you post that they're worthless when a Mesmer/Necro Virulence+Fragility build spikes as much or more than Air spikers? On Deep Wound.... you minimize its worth by noting it's merely a "short spike". By it self it can do around 100 damage. That's 20%! Add Fragility triggering and a Shatter Delusion starter on Phantom Pain and you are doing 200 damage in 1/4th of a second. That's 40%!

You can try Mend ailment on Deep Wound (the starter Condition), A) you have less than a second to remove it before Virulence is applied (with Fast Cast stats) and 2) the Mesmer can interrupt a predictable Mend Ailment with a half dozen skills. Mend Ailment AFTER Virulence begins? Lol, ok, take one Condition away...I still trigger Fragility five times for 170+ damage in three seconds. Mend Ailment is really annoying me? Say 'allo to my lil' friend 'Diversion' and you won't see that skill anymore for over a minute.

So there you are, dying or dead, having only Mended one Ailment, if that. Yes there are counter-counters to everything I describe, and Mend Ailment isn't the only defense (nothing is). The point is that its all a revolving game of strategy. Anything you post, there's a way around it. Anything I come up with around your strat, there's a counter strat to me. What DOESN'T exist is any value in blanket statements like "we see that conditions are not effective in any role".

Dudededu · Jul 28, 2005, 10:58 PM // 22:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by arredondo

The point is that its all a revolving game of strategy. Anything you post, there's a way around it. Anything I come up with around your strat, there's a counter strat to me. What DOESN'T exist is any value in blanket statements like "we see that conditions are not effective in any role".

GOD I WISH people would learn THIS small yet crucial piece of information...

Scaphism · Jul 28, 2005, 11:13 PM // 23:13

DOTs are horrible as spike damage- that's a characteristic of being a damage over time effect.

If you are trying to spike with DOTs, have fun, and I hope we run into you in Tombs and GvG so we can walk all over the latest spike strategy.

No, DOTs are best used when you're fighting a game of resources.

If you can cripple the other team's energy supply, DOTs are a more efficient means of dealing damage long-term than spike.
That doesn't mean you pick one strategy or the other- first you need the other teams' healers to blow all their energy defending against your spike attacks, then cripple their energy recovery, and watch as they're scrambling to triage because everyone (or nearly everyone) on their team is suffering from multiple conditions.
Quick, do the math on this one: There are 3 monks on your team and they all have ~5 energy. All 8 people on your team are bleeding, poisoned, and...crippled, lets say. Each monk can cast 1 mend ailment every 4 seconds.

That's when the panic starts to creep in.

Of course, Martyr is built to counter just this kind of strategy, so chew on that for a while and get back to me.

Ensign · Jul 28, 2005, 11:23 PM // 23:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by rii

Firstly dots. at full degen your doing 20dps.

You're looking at this wrong. At full degen you're doing *160* dps - 20 per opponent. Stacking DoTs onto a single target is terrible. Spreading them around, wearing down their entire team, and forcing their Monks into triage, however, can be potentially useful if not backbreaking.

Granted, you're not going to spike anyone out this way. But not every build is a spike build, right? Just look at Tainted Flesh. Why is that skill good? Because it can easily infect an entire team, wearing down their health totals, forcing their monks to heal less important targets, and enhancing your spike by starting on a given target from a lower life total.

DoTs have their place, but it's in mass infection, not in 'OMG 20 degen on a target!' That's just terrible.

Peace,
-CxE

Red Locust · Jul 28, 2005, 11:37 PM // 23:37

The only real use for conditions is for warriors to trigger certain skills. Stacking conditions on a target is a very questionable tactic, since mend ailment lets prot monks heal for 100+. When you consider how easy it is to remove all conditions from a team (10 energy and 1.25 seconds in total), basing your build around conditions is a very bad thing.

Of course the biggest downside to martyr is that it denies the monk the use of an elite energy management skill, but if you're running 3 monks, you should give martyr some serious thought.

Kiiron · Jul 28, 2005, 11:38 PM // 23:38

Quote:

Stacking DoTs onto a single target is terrible. Spreading them around, wearing down their entire team, and forcing their Monks into triage, however, can be potentially useful if not backbreaking.

I agree. As a monk, the one thing that really trips me up is when my entire team is poisoned and bleeding and conjure phantasms are flying around. Spike damage is usually easily managable, but massive DoT forces you to really think about what you should be doing. If 6/8 members of your team are suffering -7 to -10 degen, the monks' energy is going to be drained pretty quickly (and god forbid someone cast diversion...)

Dudededu · Jul 28, 2005, 11:40 PM // 23:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red Locust

Of course the biggest downside to martyr is that it denies the monk the use of an elite energy management skill, but if you're running 3 monks, you should give martyr some serious thought.

We never use Martyr on a monk... always some other */Mo carrying it.

Hell Marauder · Jul 28, 2005, 11:57 PM // 23:57

Conditions are useless? If your warrior or ranger got "weakness" on, you would not be able to inflict your +60 dps. It would be only 1/3 of that. Same goes for blindness. Conditions are cheaper and easier to inflict than hex, and some can argue they are also easy to remove. But there are some protection skills for a protection monk to limit damage to 5%. So all those big damages will be limited while damage inflicted by conditions will stay. So, simply put, nothing is really useless in GW.

Just to add: teams will find ways to enchant/boost their teamates armor, so your high dps are only relative to your victim's AL. Conditions inflicted are not considered in AL calculation. So conditions are still very effective damage dealers in the long run.

Redead91 · Jul 29, 2005, 12:07 AM // 00:07

Conditions are in no way a terrible tool in any team's arsenal - They're probably just the wrong tool for the job you're trying to accomplish. If you're looking for straight up damage, then grab a spiker or a warrior. The usefulness of DoT conditions comes in when an entire team is losing health and the monks have to start worrying about that. Don't think of conditions as your big damage dealing tools, think of them as a tool that'll give you an edge over you're opponent. And that's not even to mention the fact that conditions don't just run DoT, but provide some awesome effects like weakness, dazed, etc. As a warrior, I find that being crippled, if even for a short time, can really throw my game off. I'd advise looking at conditions from another point of view - Not how many kills do you get from the condition, but how conditions can weaken an entire team just enough to give your side the advantage.

Zeru · Jul 29, 2005, 12:11 AM // 00:11

Martyr is needed to counter mass condition spam.

If you are just using Mend ail to counteract poison/disease you are fighting a losing battle.

Rotting flesh can spread to your whole team for 15 energy. Tainted flesh can do the same for certain amounts of energy.

Poison Arrowi inflicts poison for 2 energy. Mend fixes it at 5. That's a very bad energy battle right there. On the other hand, martyr+1 mend counteracts 8 poison arrows. 16 vs 10 energy is a winnng battle.

Creed · Jul 29, 2005, 12:36 AM // 00:36

Conditions are'nt supposed to be used as a damage spike by any means. The costs for bleeding and poisoning and even diseasing (based on its cost vs. its spread effect) are all very low. The reason for this is obvious, atleast to me. You dont hit 1 person, you hit everything you can see.

20dps might be terrible. How about... 160dps?

Pretty decent right?

Two words.. eight targets. Dazed and Blind, they are unquestionable. Daze again should be spammed, 12 expertise drops its cost to alittle over 10 for a ranger (Concussion shot). Landing 2-3 on a team will cause alot of problem for them. Organised team right? Not random arenas PuGs etc. So you get 1 person to poison bleed and disease and another to wait for their monks to start throwing out the Heal parties. Concussion.

At the very least conditions ensure you force the enemy monks to carry condition removal. Manipulating your enemies skill lists by choices of your own, never a bad thing.

Hell Marauder · Jul 29, 2005, 12:46 AM // 00:46

However, if apply poison is used instead of poison arrow, you are looking at 24 sec of continuous poisoning with every hit. Martyr, on the other hand, is effective but it takes up an elite skill slot on your monk and has a recharge time of 10 sec. So it's too speculative to say conditions are bad damage dealers. They deal bits of damage here and there that will add up, and you can't reduce unless they expire or you remove them.

Entropius · Jul 29, 2005, 02:00 AM // 02:00

Conditions are not useless.

Take, for instance, Immolate. It does 50 damage and 4 seconds of On Fire at level 15. The On Fire bit does 4*7*2 = 56 damage, which ignores armor and all forms of protectyness.

116 damage, half of which ignores armor, is more than you'll get out of any quick-cast 10 energy spell in Air.

Now, consider the ranger poison that is probably what's most in question here. Apply Poison, at 12 Wilderness Survival, does 17 seconds of poison, totalling 17*6 = 102 damage per shot. This is pretty impressive, and can decimate a team if left un-fixed, but the OP's argument is that mend ailment and other forms of condition negation make this worthless.

Now consider that each Mend you make the monk cast is one Orison that they didn't cast instead. Say that an alert monk manages to remove your poison in 2 seconds: you've still gotten 72 extra damage out of the poison shot. 12 for the 2 seconds of poison, and 60 for the Orison that they didn't cast because they had to deal with your condition.

If you have multiple people spreading the things around, as someone mentioned, it gets worse. If three people get poisoned, it'll take the poor overworked prot monk 2 seconds (let's say) to Mend the first one. Since the recharge on Mend is 2 seconds with a ~1 second cast time, he'll fix the second one 3 seconds later, and the third one 3 seconds after that.

So, the first guy is poisoned for 2 seconds, the second for 5, and the third for 8; that comes out to 15 seconds @ 6/sec = 90 damage dealt by the poison, plus three casts of Mend Ailment = another 180 in lost heals. This is 270 "damage", or 90 per instance of poison arrow.

Conditions, by this analysis, do huge amounts of damage if left untreated, and very respectable amounts of damage and loss-of-healing even if you have an alert monk Mending them.

The drawback to conditions, as the OP pointed out, can be summarized as follows:

1) If you have a team based on tons of conditions, Martyr owns you.

2) You can't stack lots of conditions on one guy, or Mend Ailment will give them huge heals.

So, don't. Conditions as a way-to-kill-people on their own don't cut it for these two reasons, and you can't expect to win with a team of 8 people doing nothing but spreading poison/disease/bleed/whatever. However, one guy spreading poison around, or a disease setup, or warriors using bleed skills, can definitely add a lot to a team's ability to make the poor enemy monks have conniptions.

Darc.Syde · Jul 29, 2005, 03:55 AM // 03:55

Using conditions and your opponent having martyr as a counter isnt end-all to your build. Battle field awarness comes in when counters like martyr come into play. find that person using it, shut it down, even if its to baby sit that target. skills like Signet of Humility, Diversion, Fragility, Arcane Connundrum, Migraine etc all work as anti-condition removal. if your build isnt packing it, your build isnt designed well.

even with that, based on the current meta-game, using hexes as anti-condition removal will not work becuase of natures renewal. you would need energy denial instead.

Red Locust · Jul 29, 2005, 04:23 AM // 04:23

No, conditions really do get shafted by Martyr. Energy denial won't work too well since it costs 5 energy. Migraine/Conundrum won't do much at all on a .25s cast time. Diversion is questionable, since martyr isn't something you spam every second without glancing at hexes on you. To top it off, you're most likely carrying it on a /Mo like dudededu said, making it hard to pinpoint.

I wouldn't run a build incorporating conditions, the risk of facing a quick and easy counter is too great.

ratatass · Jul 29, 2005, 09:18 AM // 09:18

One ranger with poison arrow cand inflict enormous damage. Just lost to a team in the Tombs (PUG) where they shut us monks down, spammed a few spirits and kept poison on the whole team. Then they had a few spikers and we were done for.

The only thing that kept us going for a little while was Heal party. We werent a perfect team by all means, but it is very easy for a ranger to poison the whole team. Degen is not much, but it is constant. I could not keep up with the ranger with condition removal.

Ratatass

A pug though.

Neo-LD · Jul 29, 2005, 12:04 PM // 12:04

If one wants to poison an entire team, one is better off with apply poison.

rii · Jul 29, 2005, 02:30 PM // 14:30

Yeah, a pug

Arredondo: yes, its true that there is a counter to everything, and im not going to procrastinate over that, i understand. However, mend ailment (for me) is always packed and is therefore not one of those things you can say 'well theres a counter for everything' because that implies that not everyone takes it, etc etc. Taking your hex breaker example, thats only availiable to mesmers, and it only works on them. So, thats the kind of thing you cant say 'well theres a counter to everything' since its so specific. Mend Ailment isnt. It can be used on anyone and its used by everyone. Your virulence argument is reasonable, but i often find that hex removal vs this is another one of those things, that like above, everyone uses. once frag is off, mend ail has it sorted.

The thing with counters is that some are obscure. Some people so 'omfgftw but... (e.g.) crystal wave pwns this build (dont know what strat exactly this is, but its just an example). 'cookie cutter' skills like mend ailment arent in this league, and are practically exempt from this problem. I find that saying 'its a counter' for cookie cutter skills is as good as saying 'ok my build has a rampanty common and easily availiable counter'..... and that isnt good.

Firstly, disease is really the only easily spread condition. Apply poison comes in second, but personally I don’t like having to make a r/w (due to the energy cost) just for this skill. I feel compelled to just say ‘martyr’, but somehow I feel im just taking the easy option out. (I always try to run martyr, so I consider it a standard and acceptable counter).
Btw, I have no intention of trying to make a condition spike….. I thought you would have gathered that from the post content :S.

“Of course, Martyr is built to counter just this kind of strategy, so chew on that for a while and get back to me.”

Are you on my side or what? Mass condition < martyr indeed. But even if I didn’t have martyr, I find ensigns suggestion somewhat impractical. As I said, condition max degen requires all three conditions. Disease is fairly reasonable (even though whenever I get disease cast on me I run away and stand as far away from allies as possible), poison is spam able, but only on single targets, and how do you mass spread bleeding? The only thing I can think of is that signet of agony (self inflict bleeding) then plague sending (aoe condition transfer). However, the chance of a team all being near enough for this to work is minimal. Same goes for fevered dreams and epidemic. So bleeding is impractical (unless you can suggest something else). Poison takes time (even with speed buffs, apply poison and a sword) and disease is ok. Somehow, I really doubt that you’re actually going to achieve the full 20dps on all 8 party members…. In fact I would say disease on all and poison on about half. While that’s still damage, your sacrificing a lot to put it in place, and its risky….

“I agree. As a monk, the one thing that really trips me up is when my entire team is poisoned and bleeding and conjure phantasms are flying around.”

Here is some practical wisdom courtesy of Kiiron. Somehow, this doesn’t sound like panic if we throw the apparently standard natures renewal.
Most success with conditions depends on the enemy not being prepared, it seems (panic, triage, etc) and that isn’t really the foundation of a solid tactic.

Darc.Syde raises the point that there are a lot of hexes that can shut down a condition remover. This seems inconsistent with the theory that everyone uses nature’s renewal, surely? Signet of Humility is however, a fair point, due to it being a signet (ive recently come to love primal echoes :/), but then again, identifying the martyr is dam hard, since a) babysitting is not a mesmers job, so if your doing that is that not one up to me?, and b) as Dudededu points out, martyr can often be found on unlikely targets, and when a Mesmer baby-sits a warrior/monk looking for one skill is the day ill laugh in joy.

Thom · Jul 29, 2005, 02:57 PM // 14:57

I am a huge Martyr fan when it is played correctly. Use Martyr on a prot guy together with Ailment and you have a character who can fill specific rolls depending on opponent (protect vs spike, removal vs Conditions/Hexes). The other option mentioned above is hiding your Martyr and having that player remove fun time only when needed. You still need to defeat your opponent offensively, but martyr will give you more minutes of viability against condition heavy builds. It also kills condition based shutdown.

Boon/Mend Ailment will also allow you to keep up with some condition spam. There is enough healing there to counteract the damage done.

The solution to any healing strategy is to shut down the healers. Just as the solution to any attack is too shut down the damage dealer--in this case squishy necros and mezes.

Conditions have a place in a balanced attack. Having a poison spammer or a necro diseaser can suppliment another damage strategy nicely. In that it quietly does a ton of damage or it takes time and energy away from a primary strategy.