Guild Wars 2

I have been looking at one of the stats that saw some additional presence with the removal of magic find: boon duration. One of the factors I have been considering and thinking about is how to make good use of this stat. Originally I wanted to max out the stat to see what kind of support builds or strengthening factors I could use with this skill. However, in testing I have found that it is indeed “capped” invisibly at 90%. I have seen nothing on the wiki pages and only random player comments that have mentioned this. I would like an official response to boon duration: is it intended to have a cap at 90%? There are plenty of ways to push it well beyond this value at this time. So what was the purpose of giving us larger buffs through the rune of the traveler? Or how about platinum doubloons? I confess I am confused regarding this buff. Was it really intended to have a limit or is that a bug?

Also every stat is represented at the exotic level with boon duration under the Givers armor set, but it was never represented as an ascended accessory/back item/ring/anything ascended. Why was this attribute ignored when ascended options were intended to cover everything according to the September 3rd update?

This might be unrelate or related to topic but i d like to say that all newer boons are likely to fail to extend the duration of current boon if the current boon has already 40-50sec left. And this is %100 reproducable.

Thanks for your feedback Rhodoc! I wasn’t aware there was a max time limit cap. I am sure the time limit was instituted to prevent permanent boons from going into effect. I can understand not wanting 120 seconds of max 25 might stacks. The problem is people are being punished for speccing into boon duration. No one says, “gee, you can’t have more than 2500 power, as that would be OP.” Whether it is or isn’t, some of us care about dealing damage or dealing with incoming damage in more than the old hit him harder first paradigm. I would like to know if I stick 100 or 120 into this attribute that I can get that much out in some way even if limits are placed. I don’t know of any cap on condition damage for instance, and except for necromancers running lingering curse I can’t see any way to even hit the max cap on condition duration….I guess my rant comes down to the fact I don’t understand why the boon duration buff gets the most hate for feasibility out of the bunch?

rhodoc.2381:

This might be unrelate or related to topic but i d like to say that all newer boons are likely to fail to extend the duration of current boon if the current boon has already 40-50sec left. And this is %100 reproducable.

Unless this is new, this is incorrect. How else would you get boon durations of ~2 minutes or so (which I can achieve with swiftness while running around)?

rhodoc.2381:

This might be unrelate or related to topic but i d like to say that all newer boons are likely to fail to extend the duration of current boon if the current boon has already 40-50sec left. And this is %100 reproducable.

I regularly get over 2 minutes of fury and swiftness in WvW on my warrior who has 70% boon duration.

I don’t think the new buffs were meant to push beyond the cap as much as they were to make boon duration easier to get a hold of.

Freedan.1769:

Thanks for your feedback Rhodoc! I wasn’t aware there was a max time limit cap. I am sure the time limit was instituted to prevent permanent boons from going into effect. I can understand not wanting 120 seconds of max 25 might stacks. The problem is people are being punished for speccing into boon duration. No one says, “gee, you can’t have more than 2500 power, as that would be OP.” Whether it is or isn’t, some of us care about dealing damage or dealing with incoming damage in more than the old hit him harder first paradigm. I would like to know if I stick 100 or 120 into this attribute that I can get that much out in some way even if limits are placed. I don’t know of any cap on condition damage for instance, and except for necromancers running lingering curse I can’t see any way to even hit the max cap on condition duration….I guess my rant comes down to the fact I don’t understand why the boon duration buff gets the most hate for feasibility out of the bunch?

Actually it’s been tested and mentioned on a couple of threads already. The condition duration cap is effectively 100% but over 100% is useful when your opponent has -condition duration.

You can get +117% Condition Duration with 2x Superior Rune of the Mad King, 2x Superior Rune of Lyssa, 2x Major Rune of Lyssa, Rare Veggie Pizza, 2xGiver weapon. Probably a bit higher now with ascended weapons. Then there are the sigils.

Direct damage can be avoided through blind, block, dodge or even just walking out of the way in the case of AoE. Every class can do at least one of those.

Condition damage can be negated with condition removal and -condition duration. Every class has some way of removing 1 or more conditions at a time and possibly from their allies too.

Boon removal on the other hand is much harder to come by except maybe for Mesmer and Necromancer, possibly S/D thief.

Viking Jorun.5413:

rhodoc.2381:

This might be unrelate or related to topic but i d like to say that all newer boons are likely to fail to extend the duration of current boon if the current boon has already 40-50sec left. And this is %100 reproducable.

I regularly get over 2 minutes of fury and swiftness in WvW on my warrior who has 70% boon duration.

On your own or with other people? I remember getting weird things with trying to stack Swiftness on a dolyak. 3x banner + 2x warhorn. When we got around around 50s and tried adding more it actually dropped to 40somethin seconds. This was a couple of months ago.

Thanks for everyone’s feedback! Yaki, have you tested these buffs for over 2 minutes in a closed environment? My feedback indicates there is a cap of some kind on duration lengths of boons. As for easier boon duration, lets be frank: not all players know this. Like me, many players wanted to spec out fully for boon duration to see what the playstyle was like and if it was viable to go beyond the “cap” as its been given to us. Some will waste resources because not even the wiki mentions ANYTHING about it people just had to find out the hard way.

At the very least, if we are going to give a hard limit to the buff itself, it should turn red when it hits 90 and stop going up, so we know its pointless to push it further, or is there a skill that reduces boon duration that I don’t know about to give a reason otherwise? Also condition duration and boon duration are very different. Boons by themselves don’t kill people, they don’t lend towards victory so anyone speccing it by itself will in the end not see success. I read a great post by Pyro who pointed out that someone with weak offensive power is not a threat and even a glass cannon has the option to simply ignore them if they lacked firepower. So I really don’t see the point people make in supporting a cap on it because even with none the game itself balances the use of boons. But I did ask for feedback, and so far I have received no good explanation against removing the cap, other than the lack of removal from Khisanth. A relevant point, but it sounds and feels unconvincing to me on the whole.

As an additional aside, I have taken the liberty of being kind to other players by updating the gw2 wiki page at http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon_Duration to reflect the 90% cap. Hopefully I save some few individuals energy and time.