Having had the opportunity to throw myself against a few of the vets with breakbars in the wvw stress test, I thought I’d share with you my results and a few concerns. All of this was conducted using a necro against a veteran arrowhead.
1: The breakbar doesn’t seem to care what sort of condition you throw at it, just how long the effect lasts. My 1 second fear (doom)did less damage to the bar than my 2 second warhorn daze, which did less damage than a 3 second immobilize (dark pact), which did far less damage than a 5 second cripple(axe 3) or chill (focus 5).
2: Blind did very low damage to the bar. Well of darkness was not nearly sufficient to break it, though it applies 5 1 second blinds, while a 5 second cripple would completely break the bar and stun the mob.
3: It appears that the bar took an even 5 seconds of CC to be broken through. Dark pact looked to my eyes to eat up 3/5 of the bar a a 3 second immob, Wail of Doom, a 2 second daze, looked like about 2/5 of the bar, and used back to back they were enough to break the bar.
4: Elementalist dagger earth 4 and air 5 were both enough to completely break the bar though neither last 5 seconds.
Conclusions: Hard CC deals a certain level of breakbar damage and Movement impairing conditions are on a lower one. Daze is filed under the later category as it’s a hard CC that doesn’t impair movement, and fear is filed under the latter as well due to being a condition. The relative damage of x durations of each condition need to be addressed. Fear is stronger than immobilize which is stronger than chill which is stronger than cripple. It’s ridiculous that i have to spend a 3s immob+2 second daze to do the same thing as one short cripple. Fear should be treated the same as other stun effects.
I know this isn’t going to be exactly the same for every mob but i figure its a good place to start making general inferences from. If anybody else is gathering information on the breakbar mechanic please post it here so we can discuss.