Guild Wars 2

The newly forming condition meta seems only to value burning, and they seem not to value the other 3 damaging conditions like they should, least of all bleeds.

For reference on this, I invite you to check the wiki like I did, and break out your calculator app and look at the difference in damage. I asked the question: “How many bleed stacks does it take to equal one burn stack, for one second, with no condition damage?”

The answer? 5

This seems disheartening, because we all know that most bleeds are only applied one at a time sarcasm*

I then asked the question: “How many stacks of bleed does it take to equal burn damage at 1700 condition damage?” (1700 was chosen as it’s an easily reachable number with condition damage primary star gear.)

The answer? 2.

Not what I expected to see at all.

Conclusion? Bleeds get more benefit from stacking condition damage than burns do, relatively speaking.

I can hear you now… “but if I stop using my ‘burn rotation’ to apply bleeds, the burns fall off!”

And yes, this is true. But I invite to to look at the base durations of bleeds on any class capable of doing them.

Bleeds, even high stack bleeding moves, have longer durations than burns by a huge ammount.

This means that, yes, your burns will fall of while refilling bleeds, but you can make a long and persistent stack of bleed that stays up during your ‘burn, torment, or poison rotation’ thus increasing dps during your burn stack phase.

I’ve seen 10k bleeds ticking along side 17k burns on my condition tempest. (Which I’m getting ready to do a build video for, which, once completed will be posted here, as it will be my first foray into the YouTube world.) This was, for the record, done on the twins fractal level 40. This leads me to want to knee jerk out a click bate phrase like “27k dps!”… but the fact is that both bleeds and burns hover at 7k each, spiking higher on each side, and all the extra power from vipers gear, and damage traits means that my white damage is respectable too…(5% against bleeding foes, 10% against bring foes, and 10% after overload) so while I haven’t truly calculated the damage, it’s at least as effective at the meta sinister engineer. (Tested time spent racing to kill various mobs against the sinister meta build. We timed the kill speed of various mobs… When dpsing at the same time, I had higher bleed and burn numbers… but that has to do with damaging condition interactions. And not the per person dps.)

I digress. The main point here, is that in a phrase, bleeds are powerful, and have long durrations, and can be used to supplement any condition build worth it’s salt.

The failure to use bleeding to its fullest potential, is a failure to understand the condition damage system.

(I plan to put up a post here about condition damage, and what the “dream team” of 4 condition players would look like for raids, and why. Keep your eyes peeled for that.)

What are the thoughts of the community on this? Or do I need my video proof before anyone will believe my claims?

That makes a lot of sense, and roughly comports with what I see on my various condi builds (though you’ve seen that already!)

There are probably cases where it’s not worth, say, letting three stacks of burn fall off to put four bleeds on, but when the trade is more favorable than that – and it usually is – it makes sense to work bleeding in.

In PvP, it’s practically essential, too – even if most of your damage really is from burns, you need everything else to protect those burns against condition cleanses. (Hence my preference for a Sigil of Torment for my engi, rather than the Sigil of Earth I use in PvE).

For PVE its not bad. In Pvp or WvW burning is way better. Since duration doesn’t matter because the conditions get cleansed plus players have much smaller HP pools. So having higher damage but lower duration wins. In PVE you should be using every condition you can since there is so many traits and things that give bonus damage for attacking something with X condition. By having all the conditions stacked it gives a chance for everyone one in your party to do more damage.

BrokenGlass.9356:

The newly forming condition meta seems only to value burning, and they seem not to value the other 3 damaging conditions like they should, least of all bleeds.

For reference on this, I invite you to check the wiki like I did, and break out your calculator app and look at the difference in damage. I asked the question: “How many bleed stacks does it take to equal one burn stack, for one second, with no condition damage?”

The answer? 5

This seems disheartening, because we all know that most bleeds are only applied one at a time sarcasm*

I then asked the question: “How many stacks of bleed does it take to equal burn damage at 1700 condition damage?” (1700 was chosen as it’s an easily reachable number with condition damage primary star gear.)

The answer? 2.

Not what I expected to see at all.

Conclusion? Bleeds get more benefit from stacking condition damage than burns do, relatively speaking.

I can hear you now… “but if I stop using my ‘burn rotation’ to apply bleeds, the burns fall off!”

And yes, this is true. But I invite to to look at the base durations of bleeds on any class capable of doing them.

Bleeds, even high stack bleeding moves, have longer durations than burns by a huge ammount.

This means that, yes, your burns will fall of while refilling bleeds, but you can make a long and persistent stack of bleed that stays up during your ‘burn, torment, or poison rotation’ thus increasing dps during your burn stack phase.

I’ve seen 10k bleeds ticking along side 17k burns on my condition tempest. (Which I’m getting ready to do a build video for, which, once completed will be posted here, as it will be my first foray into the YouTube world.) This was, for the record, done on the twins fractal level 40. This leads me to want to knee jerk out a click bate phrase like “27k dps!”… but the fact is that both bleeds and burns hover at 7k each, spiking higher on each side, and all the extra power from vipers gear, and damage traits means that my white damage is respectable too…(5% against bleeding foes, 10% against bring foes, and 10% after overload) so while I haven’t truly calculated the damage, it’s at least as effective at the meta sinister engineer. (Tested time spent racing to kill various mobs against the sinister meta build. We timed the kill speed of various mobs… When dpsing at the same time, I had higher bleed and burn numbers… but that has to do with damaging condition interactions. And not the per person dps.)

I digress. The main point here, is that in a phrase, bleeds are powerful, and have long durrations, and can be used to supplement any condition build worth it’s salt.

The failure to use bleeding to its fullest potential, is a failure to understand the condition damage system.

(I plan to put up a post here about condition damage, and what the “dream team” of 4 condition players would look like for raids, and why. Keep your eyes peeled for that.)

What are the thoughts of the community on this? Or do I need my video proof before anyone will believe my claims?

Great post and accurate based on my observations. I’d add poison to that though as it’s never mentioned like burning is but stacks incredibly well on a few classes and has terrific damage with duration.

The reason fire is considered the go to Condi is warriors can apply a good amount consistently on Gor to the large hit box but what makes Engis #1 is they aren’t limited to just burning as warriors are. The forgotten class is Necro who due to ignorance are taken for epidemic and not because they are incredible bleed / poison masters.

You’ve done your math wrong. At 1700 condition damage, bleed does 124 damage per tick, and burn does 395 damage per tick. Your mistake was you forgot to factor in the initial 131.5 that comes with burns. 1700 × 0.155, which is burns scaling damage is 264, which is only a little more than twice the bleed.

I think you’re looking too hard at the specifics, and missing the overall picture. The type of condition is technically irrelevant, as how much damage any skill does can be adjusted by changing the stacks or duration. In the short run which kind of condition inflicted matters, because it changes how fast they can do damage. In the long run, only one thing matters: overall skill DPR. The *D*amage *P*er *R*echarge tells you much damage you’ll be sustaining with your conditions.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You’ve done your math wrong. At 1700 condition damage, bleed does 124 damage per tick, and burn does 395 damage per tick. Your mistake was you forgot to factor in the initial 131.5 that comes with burns. 1700 × 0.155, which is burns scaling damage is 264, which is only a little more than twice the bleed.

I think you’re looking too hard at the specifics, and missing the overall picture. The type of condition is technically irrelevant, as how much damage any skill does can be adjusted by changing the stacks or duration. In the short run which kind of condition inflicted matters, because it changes how fast they can do damage. In the long run, only one thing matters: overall skill DPR. The *D*amage *P*er *R*echarge tells you much damage you’ll be sustaining with your conditions.

I admit the math from my post was done on my desktop two nights ago…. today posted from a phone, so numbers pulled from memory. So, my apologies if I got the numbers wrong, or rounded excessively. I did however, include the base damage, as that is the core of the calculation.

395/124 is 3.1 so…. it’s 3 per 1 at 1700. My bad.

And you are correct. You are in fact looking at things correctly so far as I can tell… but duration is extremely important.

Let’s use some kitten numbers tied to basic theory to illustrate the point.

Let’s say that by spamming 3 moves with burn, end to end, you can do, say 7000 dmg, over 5 sec.

And by spamming 3 different moves with bleed, you can do 3000 dmg over say 15sec.

Clearly the bleeds are weaker then the burns, and this is what the community sees and it’s why the popular DnT ranger bonfire build spams burns while ignoring the bleed and poison damage bonus traits.

However, if you make your rotation 3 bleed moves, then 3 burn moves…. you can have bleeds ticking while the burns get applied. This increases your DPS.

DPR, only works in a vaccum… because it does not take into account the sustainability of the rotation.

In my tempest build, I can, solo, with one trip through earth attunement put up a 30 stack on a single target, and a 20 stack in aoe around that target, the shortest of which is 12 1/2 sec. My fire attunement combo, which results in 20 burn stacks, (more with the fiery greatsword/overload combo) takes less than 12 sec to complete. There are then 3 sec before earth is ready to re enter… then the second trip though earth nets 45 bleed stacks…..

Check out the burn build from Wooden Potatoes on YouTube…. He forgoes bleeds alltogether, and his burns are terribly situational… mob moves one inch to either side, burns fall off. In my build I can do all that condi to a moving target and only loose 8 bleeds, and (roughly) 6 burns.

Pfft of course broken glass is going to tell your bleed is good. Hard to set things on fire with broken glass. :P