Malice + Streamlined conditions

[DrakeWurrum]

Something I've been thinking about for a while is how the Malice stat interacts with the fact that when Bleeding is applied to an enemy by multiple parties, it's all one condition with multiple stacks. So I can't help but wonder about the implications of this.

Does this perhaps mean that one stack of Bleeding or Burning or Poison is not necessarily the same amount as another stack? I'm trying to think about how the game might track this. Especially with the two that stack in duration.

Could it perhaps be that, internally, every stack of the condition is tracked as a separate condition, even if they are all presented and displayed as a single condition, with all the stacks removed when that specific condition type is removed?

[Larynx]

The WoW Ignite dilema.

I personally think they'd just consider every stack a separate condition, but displayed as a single one.

[Merendel]

As I recall stacking conditions behaved like seperate debuffs, each with their own duration and magnituded tracked seperatly but were only displayed as a single stacked debuff on the UI.

[PonyCannon]

As I recall stacking conditions behaved like seperate debuffs, each with their own duration and magnituded tracked seperatly but were only displayed as a single stacked debuff on the UI.

Do you know if that meant if somebody removed bleeding from the target that had multiple bleeds on it, would it remove all of the stacks or just some of the stacks (the stacks of 1 person)

[DrakeWurrum]

Do you know if that meant if somebody removed bleeding from the target that had multiple bleeds on it, would it remove all of the stacks or just some of the stacks (the stacks of 1 person)

All stacks.

---------- Post added 2012-05-12 at 10:17 PM ----------

As I recall stacking conditions behaved like seperate debuffs, each with their own duration and magnituded tracked seperatly but were only displayed as a single stacked debuff on the UI.

That's really what I'm thinking. I could see it designed as a data array with a number of rows equal to the number of conditions there are, and columns being added for each individual "stack" to track as they are applied, with all the various numbers being kept track of individually (3-dimensional data arrays, not unheard of), while only displaying whether or not that particular row even exists for the entity (or displaying stacks when it's by intensity - I've noticed duration was not displayed, which was pissing me off).

[Merendel]

ya but when you think about it showing duration would be a bit difficult in that situation. Take bleeds for example. If you have a 10s bleed and apply it twice with a 1 second interval you now have 1 bleed with 9s remaining and 1 bleed with 10s remaining displaying as 2 stacks of bleed, how do you display that duration? how do you display it when you have 30stacks of bleeds?

[PonyCannon]

ya but when you think about it showing duration would be a bit difficult in that situation. Take bleeds for example. If you have a 10s bleed and apply it twice with a 1 second interval you now have 1 bleed with 9s remaining and 1 bleed with 10s remaining displaying as 2 stacks of bleed, how do you display that duration? how do you display it when you have 30stacks of bleeds?

From what I've seen they don't really show durations (the symbol starts to flash when the highest duration bleed is running out I believe). It just shows the stacks and the amount it shows fluctuates a lot. Adding another bleed to a target doesn't just refresh the duration it adds a separate stack.

[KeyserSoze]

ya but when you think about it showing duration would be a bit difficult in that situation. Take bleeds for example. If you have a 10s bleed and apply it twice with a 1 second interval you now have 1 bleed with 9s remaining and 1 bleed with 10s remaining displaying as 2 stacks of bleed, how do you display that duration? how do you display it when you have 30stacks of bleeds?

Assuming no more bleeds applied beyond the second, show 2 bleeds with a duration of 9 seconds. After 9 seconds, show 1 bleed having a 1 second duration. Basically, just update the duration with the count. If you were to apply a third bleed at the 5-second mark, you would show 3 bleeds with a 5 second duration. At the 10-second mark, you would show 2 bleeds with a 1 second duration. Just keep rollin', ya know? The problem is that it would be non-intuitive rather than difficult to accurately represent.

Of course, it would just be easier to refresh the duration with each bleed application, but then you'd have to put a pretty hard limit on max stacks so the game doesn't get cheesy.

[DrakeWurrum]

Just show how long til the condition completely runs out and has no stacks left.

[Glytch]

even if they dont want to show a duration number i would like a little timer bar or something that showed duration left, like the bars in gw1 on the effects monitor

something to know "ok, that's halfway gone"

[rhandric]

Assuming no more bleeds applied beyond the second, show 2 bleeds with a duration of 9 seconds. After 9 seconds, show 1 bleed having a 1 second duration. Basically, just update the duration with the count. If you were to apply a third bleed at the 5-second mark, you would show 3 bleeds with a 5 second duration. At the 10-second mark, you would show 2 bleeds with a 1 second duration. Just keep rollin', ya know? The problem is that it would be non-intuitive rather than difficult to accurately represent.

Of course, it would just be easier to refresh the duration with each bleed application, but then you'd have to put a pretty hard limit on max stacks so the game doesn't get cheesy.

Just make it show the total duration, and take stacks off the stack count as they expire. ie 2 stacks with 1 stack lasting 10 secs and the other lasting 9, display 2 stacks lasting 10 secs, and at 1 sec remaining decrease the stack counter.
I can easily see it being kept track of as an array (of conditions) of linked lists (for each condition). And as long as they make it so that condition application has a buffer/queue, it's easy to avoid the ignite munching problem that exists in WoW.

[Glytch]

Just make it show the total duration, and take stacks off the stack count as they expire. ie 2 stacks with 1 stack lasting 10 secs and the other lasting 9, display 2 stacks lasting 10 secs, and at 1 sec remaining decrease the stack counter.
I can easily see it being kept track of as an array (of conditions) of linked lists (for each condition). And as long as they make it so that condition application has a buffer/queue, it's easy to avoid the ignite munching problem that exists in WoW.

if each condition stack is begin applied separately we wont have to worry about munching

the problem wow has is that it tries to merge everything into one item

[Merendel]

Just make it show the total duration, and take stacks off the stack count as they expire. ie 2 stacks with 1 stack lasting 10 secs and the other lasting 9, display 2 stacks lasting 10 secs, and at 1 sec remaining decrease the stack counter.
I can easily see it being kept track of as an array (of conditions) of linked lists (for each condition). And as long as they make it so that condition application has a buffer/queue, it's easy to avoid the ignite munching problem that exists in WoW.

you seem to be overcomplicating your goal there. Just have the duration bar be equal to the longest remaining duration have the stacks fall off as they currently do.

Still I'm not really all that sure how usefull that is unless you are trying to make use of an ability or trait that say requires a bleed on the target. in most other cases who cares how long your vulnerability is going to last... the stacks are going to start falling off rapidly once new stacks start being applied, build em up and make use of em before they all fall off and build em up agian. likewise knowing how long each individual bleed is going to last is rather redundant unless your looking for when to swap back to your bleeding weapon. Either way bleed is going to do X damage per stack to the target reguardless of if you know how long till it falls off.

[Glytch]

you seem to be overcomplicating your goal there. Just have the duration bar be equal to the longest remaining duration have the stacks fall off as they currently do.

Still I'm not really all that sure how usefull that is unless you are trying to make use of an ability or trait that say requires a bleed on the target. in most other cases who cares how long your vulnerability is going to last... the stacks are going to start falling off rapidly once new stacks start being applied, build em up and make use of em before they all fall off and build em up agian. likewise knowing how long each individual bleed is going to last is rather redundant unless your looking for when to swap back to your bleeding weapon. Either way bleed is going to do X damage per stack to the target reguardless of if you know how long till it falls off.

the timers help alot when you're grouped when trying to distinguish just how long your buddy's vulnerability lasts

[DrakeWurrum]

Having timers on your debuffs are immensely useful whenever you care about keeping your debuffs up. And most professions do care about it, in one way or another.

[Glytch]

Having timers on your debuffs are immensely useful whenever you care about keeping your debuffs up. And most professions do care about it, in one way or another.

esp things like poison and chilled

tho i guess those have extended durations, but it'd still be really helpful

[Deleted]

There are a lot of different scenarios regarding effect stacking, and it is not simple at all. Here are a few possible scenarios to which I have an answer for less than half of them at the moment. And I am not even 100% sure of the answers I do have.

1. Intensity stacking, Basic
Description: Stack less than 25 stacks of bleeding on a target.
Answer: Each stack applies its own damage for its listed duration, independently from the others.

2. Intensity stacking, Advanced
Description: Stack more than 25 stacks of bleeding on a target.
Alternative 1: Any stacking that tries to go beyond 25 stacks fails completely or only applies enough stacks to reach 25, discarding the rest.
Alternative 2: When a bleeding stack goes beyond 25 stacks, another bleeding stack is removed based on some selection criteria.
Alternative 3: All stacks are applied, but only the 25 first stacks are counted when dealing damage. (which bleeds are prioritized is also in question in this alternative)

3. Duration stacking, Basic
Description: You cast two spells providing 10s swiftness right after each other
Answer: The swiftness lasts 20s

4. Duration stacking, Advanced
Description: Stack burning on a target.
Alternative 1: The strongest burning applies first.
Alternative 2: The burning that was applied first, applies first.
Alternative 3: The power of the strongest burning effect applies until the target stops burning.

5. Duration stacking, Max duration
Description: A group of 5 Elementalists gets together and cast Windborne Speed and Glyph of Elemental Harmony continuously for a while.
Alternative 1: There is a noticeable upper limit on how much you can stack up duration.
Alternative 2: There is not an upper limit, or the upper limit is very high.

6. Duration stacking, field effects
Description: You cast Healing Rain that lasts 9s and applies Regeneration for 2s
Answer: Every tick (Second 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) applies two seconds of regeneration to the character as long as you stay in the field.

7. Duration stacking, Stacking field effects
Description: You cast two Healing Rain on top of each other
Alternative 1: The Healing Rain effect is only applied once every second.
Alternative 2: Two Healing Rain effects are applied each second.

[Merendel]

esp things like poison and chilled

tho i guess those have extended durations, but it'd still be really helpful

For some, particuarly those that stack duration not intensity I can see the value. you want to know when its going to fall off to reapply. However for intensity stacking ones its somewhat less helpful. There is a big difference between 1 stack of vulnerability and 10 stacks of vulnerability, there isnt so much between 1 and no stacks. I dont see that much value in knowing when that last stack would fall in that case, if that stack number starts dropping down towards 1 then its time to apply more.

[Deleted]

The way the bleeding condition and such work in GW2 makes it very difficult to track them in an organized way. But that's also not really that useful, you can stack the conditions anyway. There is no need to play the affli lock game imo. And I figure I'll get a feel for durations after a while of playing anyway. Merendels posts made a lot of sense to me tbh.

[Glytch]

The way the bleeding condition and such work in GW2 makes it very difficult to track them in an organized way. But that's also not really that useful, you can stack the conditions anyway. There is no need to play the affli lock game imo. And I figure I'll get a feel for durations after a while of playing anyway. Merendels posts made a lot of sense to me tbh.

what if you're poisoned and you want to know the duration of the poison so you can guage if you can wait long enough to do a heal without poison on or if its better to heal now and suffer the poison penalty. very real strategy in high end pvp

same with chilled (read: diversion v2.0)

if they put it in for those conditions its simple enough to add it to all conditions, the flashing already works based on the duration of the longest effect, now its just the matter of applying a 3 pixel thick line next to the condition that represents whats already there