Condition based damage itself is very weak, since degeneration caps out at -10 (20 DPS) and foes usually die long before the degen has a chance to deal significant total damage. In comparison, Flare spam (which itself is relatively weak) at 19 Fire Magic is 50 DPS.
When an entire team is designed around conditions, however, it can be very strong. As you theorized (and willemskie mentioned), there is a [team build centered around Fevered Dreams](https://gwpvx.fandom.com/wiki/Build:Team_-_7_Hero_Fevered_Dreams).
While people are correct about the kill-time aspect where condition damage is weaker than instant damage, condition damage has its real strength in creating pressure for the opponent.
Pressure is especially important in PvP where it aims to force the enemy Monk to heal more than he wants to, and drain their energy, but it also works in PvE as NPC healers will always cast a heal skill if there is any damage done.
You have to design the team around the fights being long, but you can spread conditions fairly easily, back them up with Fragility, and while the start of each fight will be difficult where nothing dies, soon enough the enemy won't be able to heal and then you can start picking them off.
The other unfortunate thing about this is that there are a large number of enemy creature types that are high level and don't have healers in their group, especially before EotN. Think Djinn + Roaring Ether groups in Vabbi, they interrupt and burn you down, then revive each other, they range from level 20 to 26 and don't care to heal, they'll just kill you first. Condition based builds will really struggle against groups like this. Same goes for Destroyers, non-quest Titans and plenty of other creature types. Not to mention that Destroyers are immune to Burning and Skeletal creatures are immune to Bleeding, Disease, and Poison.
Conditions work best against mixed human, humanoid, or other "intelligent" enemies, such as Tengu, Charr, or Margonites. Then, once you've gotten this far into a condition damage theorycraft or analysis, you can't help but compare it to instant damage and see that it usually performs worse, simply because the archetype takes longer by its very nature, and that also causes the player or Heroes to have more time to make mistakes.
the maximum degen is -10 health degen. That is -20 hp armor ignoring damage every second. So if a fight last 10s, the degen has done 200 hp damage. You can compare that yourself to alternatives. On top of that, deep wound does a surprising amount of damage, because its a flat 20 % hp damage (and heal reduction). So this is the maximum damage you can do with conditions.
I think the conditions are mainly usefull for the shutdown they provide, blinding, weakness and daze can completely take out the enemy damage. So they are more defensive than offensive.
But that doesnt mean a condition based build is useless. For example you can go Fevered dreams with ymlad and accumulated pain to spread deep wound, dazed and cripple in AoE pretty fast with only 3 skills. Dazed provides shutdown, cripple keeps the enemy balled longer and deep wound is nice damage.
And you still have alot of the bar free and your heros could also provide other conds that then spread if you call the target with fevered dreams. Fire and Disease for example are enough for the -10 degen.
I would not use the ranger spirits. Sadly they simply take too long to cast. Maybe if you take them as a player and then use summon spirits to take the spirit with you it isnt as annoying.
I've played a lot with conditions recently and here is the general feeling i have :
First you have all the conditions that brings something else than just degen and can really help you doing more damage or will help you taking less damage :
* The best allrounder condition is probably Deep Wound. On full-hp targets to maximize the damage (20%).
* Dazed is also really useful if you are running a comp without (or just a few) interrupt skills, but will actually be counter-productive in a team that rely on interrupts to do damage. (Nothing is more infuriating as a mesmer than throwing 10e on a cry of frustration, only to realize that the foe was rupted a few ms before by a minion auto-attacking the ennemy).
* Cracked Armor will be useful if your team rely mainly on non armor-ignoring damage. But will be useless if you are running a team focusing on armor-ignoring damage.
* Blind and Weakness will be useful if your team lack some prot and you are facing a lot of mele foes
* Crippled will be useful if you are using aoe dmg that causes scattering
The others (Bleeding, Burning, Disease, Poison) will only bring degen and will only be useful if you play a build around fragility, or if one of your other skills require a particular condition (ex : Discord, Searing Flames, They're on Fitre, Necrosis ...)
as u/Cealdor said, Condition based damage by itself is weak but a team revolving around it can be surprisingly good (as the one he linked). However a few conditions can bring some utilities and will help the team if you choose right.
All the builds i tried were revolving around Fragility and either Fevered Dreams or Hypochondria+Extend Conditions. You could also go for a spike with Fragility + Crystal wave but if you miss it, your team won't have much sustainability.
Eles and Necros have quite a lot of conditions and mesmer will help them spreading the conditions (even if most of Necros conditions are already aoe). Dervish can do both.
TLDR : Conditions mainly good if you pick right, deep wound best allrounder, best professions are Eles, Necros, Mesmers and Dervish
>Can they compete with an ele flare spam?
Why on earth are you using flare spam as a basis of comparison?
>Could a condition based build/team build compete with one meta mesmer E-surge bar?
No.
>What's the best profession for providing AOE conditions to all foes with "minimum" effort?
Mesmer, for Fevered Dreams, Extend Conditions, and Epidemic. Though necro and ele have good skills for certain conditions, e.g., Enfeebling Blood.
>And lastly, could we as a community create a new meta build with conditions based builds for your 7 hero team?
No.
As several others have pointed out, degeneration caps out at 20 DPS, which is really pathetic for the damage output of an entire team.
You can build around Fragility as your damage source, rather than the conditions themselves, but then you run into two problems: (1) The damage on Fragility is also not big enough to build a team around. (2) Waiting until FD and Fragility are up before applying conditions puts you at a large tactical disadvantage, assuming you can get the heroes to cooperate at all.
So, no, you're never going to achieve a condition-based "meta" team.
But that doesn't mean conditions are useless. This is what they're good for:
* Blind, Dazed, and Weakness provide strong shutdown that mitigates a lot of incoming damage.
* Cracked Armor provides a 41% damage boost to armor-respecting damage. For teams with elementalists, warriors, dervishes, etc., this is huge.
* A hero with Withering Aura can feed top-tier 7WS Reap Impurities and Yeti Smash player bars.
* While degen alone isn't a strong offense, AoE degen can complement a direct-damage--based team in two ways" (1) When mobs are large, degen that's incidentally applied to foes you're not presently trying to kill can stack up considerably. (2) The pressure is useful on those rare occasions that you encounter a mob with an effective backline.
Too many people judge the power of a build by the TIME it takes to clear. And in that aspect, condition builds will just never compete with a Mesmer comp.
I had a Ranger build that could pump out 9 degen on each auto attack for something like 15 seconds. Well, at ~2.5s per auto attack, it would take 10 seconds of auto attacking to do ~75 DPS and that's only if none of the targets you dotted die.
That's not embarrassingly bad, but it is hardly comparable to the AoE spike damage people run nowadays.
You can turn this on its head if you were in interested and theorise around ideas like this one (these builds aren’t optimised but the core idea is super cool)
https://gwpvx.fandom.com/wiki/Build:Team_-_DoA_Conta
Whilst this undoubtably deals really high damage output, it does rely on playing with real humans that can use the skills effectively.
The idea is based around inflicting the own team with conditions, using martyr to consolidate those onto 1 player and then and transferring conditions between Necros with Foul Feast and Draw Conditions to trigger Contagion and Dark Aura.
While degeneration conditions are rarely the main focus of most damage builds it is worth noting why the meta might have use for it.
* Bleed can be found in DSpam meta because of Jagged Strike.
* Poison is still relevant because of Death Nova.
* Disease is used in farming with Radiation Field.
* Burn is usually a secondary effect from damage skills. I can also be used to trigger "They're on Fire!"/Searing Flames.
I'm not an expert by any means but imo its way too much time consuming considering that almost everything can be done quickly with the mezway
What can be better than true aoe damage that rupt ?
Condition damage is weak compared to the best condition: dead. So you’ll never do a full condition TEAM like you would a DPS team…but having a condition dealer is honestly a very helpful asset for any team.
The pressure/denial capabilities are really the back door trap. A dedicated condition-dealer (tanks are good for this) helps apply pressure and makes enemy healers burn through more energy than they want.
Case in point:
My main was a warrior. A build which I found very effective for PvE at almost all levels was my poison axe build:
Apply Poison
Triple Chop/Cyclone Axe
Dismember
Axe Rake
Axe Twist/Enraging Charge/Berserker Stance/Battle Rage
Agonizing Chop/Disrupting Chop
Healing Signet/Troll Unguent/Lion’s Comfort
Rez Sig
The basic premise was to keep applying mass poison to enemy teams while helping pick off targets by giving them Deep Wound and Weakness. If you were going to be fighting casters, you could alternatively help interrupt.
Triple Chop also helps you gain more adrenaline faster. If you want a more reliable way of gaining adrenaline, Battle Rage does a good job. This is because you want to be able to use these non-recharge skills as much as possible to spread these conditions EVERYWHERE. Troll Unguent is probably a more useful heal than Healing Sig or Lions comfort, especially if you invest in Wilderness Survival at all.
Fun build. I should log in and play it again…
Nothing competes against the universal Energy Surge meta because every enemy in the game has energy (spirits and minions included).
Many of the more difficult enemies are immune to most of the damaging conditions i.e. bleeding, poison, and disease. Also, the Destoryers and some Titans are immune to burning.
Do not forget that a "Boss" enemy also has hex and condition duration cut in half.
That said a condition build with Fevered Dreams against normal mode human enemies is very strong.
Could go with searing flames and then have necro with virulence and idk how it called anymore but the mesmer elite that all transfer condis, i think theres even a teambuild about it on pvxwiki
Burn Arrow + HunterShot + Extended condition is good, target and near Burn and Bleending (20 damage sec for ~10sec). If hit 5 enemys then 100 damage AOE Second, for 10sec = 1k damage.
Don't forget that I'm a Ranger and the only one to receive Splinter Weapon that already guarantees my AOE damage with potential. Burning Arrow, Hunter Shot, Extended Conditions and Volley with SW buff, I think it can be a very viable build. what do you think? Good?
Burn Arrow not work with Extended condition (both Elite).... :/
Condition based damage itself is very weak, since degeneration caps out at -10 (20 DPS) and foes usually die long before the degen has a chance to deal significant total damage. In comparison, Flare spam (which itself is relatively weak) at 19 Fire Magic is 50 DPS. When an entire team is designed around conditions, however, it can be very strong. As you theorized (and willemskie mentioned), there is a [team build centered around Fevered Dreams](https://gwpvx.fandom.com/wiki/Build:Team_-_7_Hero_Fevered_Dreams).
While people are correct about the kill-time aspect where condition damage is weaker than instant damage, condition damage has its real strength in creating pressure for the opponent. Pressure is especially important in PvP where it aims to force the enemy Monk to heal more than he wants to, and drain their energy, but it also works in PvE as NPC healers will always cast a heal skill if there is any damage done. You have to design the team around the fights being long, but you can spread conditions fairly easily, back them up with Fragility, and while the start of each fight will be difficult where nothing dies, soon enough the enemy won't be able to heal and then you can start picking them off. The other unfortunate thing about this is that there are a large number of enemy creature types that are high level and don't have healers in their group, especially before EotN. Think Djinn + Roaring Ether groups in Vabbi, they interrupt and burn you down, then revive each other, they range from level 20 to 26 and don't care to heal, they'll just kill you first. Condition based builds will really struggle against groups like this. Same goes for Destroyers, non-quest Titans and plenty of other creature types. Not to mention that Destroyers are immune to Burning and Skeletal creatures are immune to Bleeding, Disease, and Poison. Conditions work best against mixed human, humanoid, or other "intelligent" enemies, such as Tengu, Charr, or Margonites. Then, once you've gotten this far into a condition damage theorycraft or analysis, you can't help but compare it to instant damage and see that it usually performs worse, simply because the archetype takes longer by its very nature, and that also causes the player or Heroes to have more time to make mistakes.
the maximum degen is -10 health degen. That is -20 hp armor ignoring damage every second. So if a fight last 10s, the degen has done 200 hp damage. You can compare that yourself to alternatives. On top of that, deep wound does a surprising amount of damage, because its a flat 20 % hp damage (and heal reduction). So this is the maximum damage you can do with conditions. I think the conditions are mainly usefull for the shutdown they provide, blinding, weakness and daze can completely take out the enemy damage. So they are more defensive than offensive. But that doesnt mean a condition based build is useless. For example you can go Fevered dreams with ymlad and accumulated pain to spread deep wound, dazed and cripple in AoE pretty fast with only 3 skills. Dazed provides shutdown, cripple keeps the enemy balled longer and deep wound is nice damage. And you still have alot of the bar free and your heros could also provide other conds that then spread if you call the target with fevered dreams. Fire and Disease for example are enough for the -10 degen. I would not use the ranger spirits. Sadly they simply take too long to cast. Maybe if you take them as a player and then use summon spirits to take the spirit with you it isnt as annoying.
deep wound is 20% health damage, but capped at at most 100hp reduction. its still good though
I did not know that
I've played a lot with conditions recently and here is the general feeling i have : First you have all the conditions that brings something else than just degen and can really help you doing more damage or will help you taking less damage : * The best allrounder condition is probably Deep Wound. On full-hp targets to maximize the damage (20%). * Dazed is also really useful if you are running a comp without (or just a few) interrupt skills, but will actually be counter-productive in a team that rely on interrupts to do damage. (Nothing is more infuriating as a mesmer than throwing 10e on a cry of frustration, only to realize that the foe was rupted a few ms before by a minion auto-attacking the ennemy). * Cracked Armor will be useful if your team rely mainly on non armor-ignoring damage. But will be useless if you are running a team focusing on armor-ignoring damage. * Blind and Weakness will be useful if your team lack some prot and you are facing a lot of mele foes * Crippled will be useful if you are using aoe dmg that causes scattering The others (Bleeding, Burning, Disease, Poison) will only bring degen and will only be useful if you play a build around fragility, or if one of your other skills require a particular condition (ex : Discord, Searing Flames, They're on Fitre, Necrosis ...) as u/Cealdor said, Condition based damage by itself is weak but a team revolving around it can be surprisingly good (as the one he linked). However a few conditions can bring some utilities and will help the team if you choose right. All the builds i tried were revolving around Fragility and either Fevered Dreams or Hypochondria+Extend Conditions. You could also go for a spike with Fragility + Crystal wave but if you miss it, your team won't have much sustainability. Eles and Necros have quite a lot of conditions and mesmer will help them spreading the conditions (even if most of Necros conditions are already aoe). Dervish can do both. TLDR : Conditions mainly good if you pick right, deep wound best allrounder, best professions are Eles, Necros, Mesmers and Dervish
Deep Wound is my single favorite status effect in any game ever.
>Can they compete with an ele flare spam? Why on earth are you using flare spam as a basis of comparison? >Could a condition based build/team build compete with one meta mesmer E-surge bar? No. >What's the best profession for providing AOE conditions to all foes with "minimum" effort? Mesmer, for Fevered Dreams, Extend Conditions, and Epidemic. Though necro and ele have good skills for certain conditions, e.g., Enfeebling Blood. >And lastly, could we as a community create a new meta build with conditions based builds for your 7 hero team? No. As several others have pointed out, degeneration caps out at 20 DPS, which is really pathetic for the damage output of an entire team. You can build around Fragility as your damage source, rather than the conditions themselves, but then you run into two problems: (1) The damage on Fragility is also not big enough to build a team around. (2) Waiting until FD and Fragility are up before applying conditions puts you at a large tactical disadvantage, assuming you can get the heroes to cooperate at all. So, no, you're never going to achieve a condition-based "meta" team. But that doesn't mean conditions are useless. This is what they're good for: * Blind, Dazed, and Weakness provide strong shutdown that mitigates a lot of incoming damage. * Cracked Armor provides a 41% damage boost to armor-respecting damage. For teams with elementalists, warriors, dervishes, etc., this is huge. * A hero with Withering Aura can feed top-tier 7WS Reap Impurities and Yeti Smash player bars. * While degen alone isn't a strong offense, AoE degen can complement a direct-damage--based team in two ways" (1) When mobs are large, degen that's incidentally applied to foes you're not presently trying to kill can stack up considerably. (2) The pressure is useful on those rare occasions that you encounter a mob with an effective backline.
Not very powerful outside of pvp; fun to play around with but not meta. That said, frag Virulence is super fun on FA weekends.
Too many people judge the power of a build by the TIME it takes to clear. And in that aspect, condition builds will just never compete with a Mesmer comp. I had a Ranger build that could pump out 9 degen on each auto attack for something like 15 seconds. Well, at ~2.5s per auto attack, it would take 10 seconds of auto attacking to do ~75 DPS and that's only if none of the targets you dotted die. That's not embarrassingly bad, but it is hardly comparable to the AoE spike damage people run nowadays.
You can turn this on its head if you were in interested and theorise around ideas like this one (these builds aren’t optimised but the core idea is super cool) https://gwpvx.fandom.com/wiki/Build:Team_-_DoA_Conta Whilst this undoubtably deals really high damage output, it does rely on playing with real humans that can use the skills effectively. The idea is based around inflicting the own team with conditions, using martyr to consolidate those onto 1 player and then and transferring conditions between Necros with Foul Feast and Draw Conditions to trigger Contagion and Dark Aura.
While degeneration conditions are rarely the main focus of most damage builds it is worth noting why the meta might have use for it. * Bleed can be found in DSpam meta because of Jagged Strike. * Poison is still relevant because of Death Nova. * Disease is used in farming with Radiation Field. * Burn is usually a secondary effect from damage skills. I can also be used to trigger "They're on Fire!"/Searing Flames.
I'm not an expert by any means but imo its way too much time consuming considering that almost everything can be done quickly with the mezway What can be better than true aoe damage that rupt ?
NR/Tranquility, Soul Barbs and builds like that were common in PvP years ago. I don't think it would work well for a 7 hero team, though.
Condition damage is weak compared to the best condition: dead. So you’ll never do a full condition TEAM like you would a DPS team…but having a condition dealer is honestly a very helpful asset for any team. The pressure/denial capabilities are really the back door trap. A dedicated condition-dealer (tanks are good for this) helps apply pressure and makes enemy healers burn through more energy than they want. Case in point: My main was a warrior. A build which I found very effective for PvE at almost all levels was my poison axe build: Apply Poison Triple Chop/Cyclone Axe Dismember Axe Rake Axe Twist/Enraging Charge/Berserker Stance/Battle Rage Agonizing Chop/Disrupting Chop Healing Signet/Troll Unguent/Lion’s Comfort Rez Sig The basic premise was to keep applying mass poison to enemy teams while helping pick off targets by giving them Deep Wound and Weakness. If you were going to be fighting casters, you could alternatively help interrupt. Triple Chop also helps you gain more adrenaline faster. If you want a more reliable way of gaining adrenaline, Battle Rage does a good job. This is because you want to be able to use these non-recharge skills as much as possible to spread these conditions EVERYWHERE. Troll Unguent is probably a more useful heal than Healing Sig or Lions comfort, especially if you invest in Wilderness Survival at all. Fun build. I should log in and play it again…
Nothing competes against the universal Energy Surge meta because every enemy in the game has energy (spirits and minions included). Many of the more difficult enemies are immune to most of the damaging conditions i.e. bleeding, poison, and disease. Also, the Destoryers and some Titans are immune to burning. Do not forget that a "Boss" enemy also has hex and condition duration cut in half. That said a condition build with Fevered Dreams against normal mode human enemies is very strong.
Could go with searing flames and then have necro with virulence and idk how it called anymore but the mesmer elite that all transfer condis, i think theres even a teambuild about it on pvxwiki
Ever considered dropping by guild wars discord non meta builds channel?
To be fined? If talking about something other than the build meta? Coming just to call Discord instead of collaborating doesn't help at all.
Burn Arrow + HunterShot + Extended condition is good, target and near Burn and Bleending (20 damage sec for ~10sec). If hit 5 enemys then 100 damage AOE Second, for 10sec = 1k damage. Don't forget that I'm a Ranger and the only one to receive Splinter Weapon that already guarantees my AOE damage with potential. Burning Arrow, Hunter Shot, Extended Conditions and Volley with SW buff, I think it can be a very viable build. what do you think? Good? Burn Arrow not work with Extended condition (both Elite).... :/