Guild Wars 2

So, I just recently started playing a condition build on my Guardian. Burning is one of the most powerful conditions as far as damage is concerned, and just looking at some of the numbers and how it scales, this should have done a fair amount of DPS.

What I found is that there is almost no DPS. Since burning stacks in duration, if someone else burns a target, the damage is replaced with their condition damage stat. Especially for the guardian, who has a profession mechanic devoted to sharing burning conditions, this makes a condition build useless.

I can apply all the burning I want, but if one other person on my team puts it on, my condition damage stat means nothing and my build becomes almost invalid. Unless I want to play only by myself, but this is a community game. I should feel happy to see other people (and often do).

Thieves with “Venom Share” builds are not bothered by stacking conditions, as the venom now applies the thief’s condition damage stat, or the other players, whichever is ‘higher’.

It would be nice to see something like this in the burning condition. Somehow applying the highest condition damage and letting other people add to the duration. Otherwise guardian builds that focus on burning become very difficult to play in parties with. I would imagine an elementalist with a focus on burning and fire attainments would suffer form similar issues.

I believe poison also suffers from the same problem, but I find it’s value in the healing power reduction, so it’s never been an issue to me when I play necro.

Has anyone else noticed this? Or noticed similar issues with other professions and duration stacking conditions?

Condition damage.. well…

I find it very nice you are looking into burning from your guardian. But I must say, IMHO they USE burning on target, but they are no condition users.

I have a condition ranger, It uses SB and Axe torch, and flametrap, giving it 3 burns.
I have a hybrid warrior, It uses longbow giving it 2 burns
I have an elementalist, It also thrives by burning, it gets +10% dmg like the guardian, and in the fire attunement: burning, burning on crit… even though it’s mostly DPS specced.
I have a condi mesmer, on both staff and torch: burning.
Well I do not use dhuumfire on necro, as it is a waste of stats Imho. so you’re safe there.
All guardians either conditions or DPS will proc fire every 5th, 4th3rd hit, they have a conidtion clean which is a firefield.
And engineer. I’m not even starting about flamethrower and kits.

You are not going to evade your fire being overwritten…never. IMHO condition builds for guardian are way underpowered at the moment, leaving them non viable in any kind of group content.

Condition Mesmer is viable in PVE, ranger, warrior, necro, ele and engineer, only partially… due to the abundance of conditions in PvE with no stats backing them, e.g. Empty conditions.

In pve conditions are performing very poorly for the reasons you discovered for yourself.

Some stack in duration and not intensity, so if multiple targets are applying poison or burning, extra poison and burning simply gets added to the back of the queue.
And even stacking conditions like bleeding can quickly get capped out at 25.

The system does not consider the performance of each condition. First come, first serve. Non-condition builds often still have some bit of conditions on them, so they will take up space dealing minor damage at the expense of condition builds that would deal significant damage.

Compounded on this is that conditions also stack a max number of times. If a target has received 5 stacks of poison, further stacks are not applied (or something like that, im not to familiar with the intimates of each condition).

And that’s ignoring conditions who get removed or targets that are immune to conditions (f.e. world objects)

If you don’t have a group hogging condition spots your damage is okay (not great), if you do have a group that competes for conditions your damage is abysmal.
So conditions are very limited in pve and in general considered bad to build for.

I’ve run several dungeons with my S/S LB warrior, it uses sinister armor. When I get into a dungeon with rangers gaurdians and memsers It functions perfect, giving me acces to 4500 dmg/tick in conditions (also using burning when possible) and 1200-1500 (max 1750) on auto sword. give or take a couple of hundreds (depending on might)

But If I have an enigineer,a necro and a warrior in party I do about 250-750 condition dmage a tick and roughly the same physical damage. losing me 60-80% of my potential damage capability,

This also shows why there are threads all over the forums asking for imnprovements on the condition system, raising of stacks, condition overflow dmg, and or other changes to the condition system to make conditions viable.

The only class not dealing so much with the problems cause by conditions is mesmer as the 2 main conditions for mesmer are confusion and torment, both are carried by other preffesions but will NOT cap out. 2 mesmers will reach the cap[, 3 will cause deminished damage.

But conditions are not only important due to damage:

Most conditions are looked over:
vulnerability for dps enhancement
weakness for enemy damage reduction
blinds for misses
poison for reduced healing
chilled for lower attack speed/ slower movement
cripple for slower movement/ no escapes
stuns/dazes/fear: interupt

While it doesn’t seem common for people to move toward a condition build, with the amount of players many like the OP will ultimately try it. It could be valuable for anet to include a mini-tutorial somewhere so people who may wish to play a condition build can understand the mechanics before they invest heavily into it. Not everyone visits the the forums and they probably wish there was warning in game about condition issues before they out are laughed out and kicked from a dungeon or realize at some point they are doing subpar damage. Conditions can be powerful in pvp, but with out the perfect group setup they fall by the wayside even in small scale pvp (dungeons) and are next to useless in most uncoordinated large world events (coordinated tri-wurm and certain mordrem the exception). This still requires coordination, however, because even if the enemy takes more condition damage power builds will attack if they don’t know and kill that condition damage.

TLDR: If you can’t fix condition damage at least help your players figure out it is a niche pve build before they invest in it.

alright. Replacing a myth here. When it comes to burning only the highest ticking burning will tick. When that burns duration runs out. Then the next ticking burning will tick. In a burn guardians build though this should never matter.

A burn guardian can only be out burned by another burn guardian provided equal might stacks.

I run a soldiers/sinister burn build on my guard and it usually ticks for around 800 damage with 2-4 stacks of might. If I went full condi I could probably get it to over 1000.

Atm The only way someone could out burn me is if they were running a full condi build with max condi damage stats. AND high might stacks while I had almost no might. And if there doing that I welcome them to the damage. They earned it. Im a hybrid after all so burn guardians shouldnt worry too much if they lose burning for a couple seconds. Were still doing pretty decent damage.

Next: Even if it was true that the most recent application did the damage (this is only true in the case of bleeds, confusion, torment where the most recent application over rides the previous applications once it reaches cap….which is bullkitten. Lower applications should not be able to override higher applications! A power builds bleeds shouldnt over ride a condi builds -.- ever… but thats for another thread) The burn guardian would still be doing most of the burning. We have more ways to apply burning on shorter cooldowns than even the engineer. The previous burn gods. (since dhuumfire got nuked). We apply it so OFTEN that we can reach the burning cap on a PvE mob without the help of our team mates.

TL;DR

So. If your noticing that your burns get over ridden as a burn specced guardian (meaning you at the VERY LEAST have avenging wrath and a method of applying permanent burning) is if you have 0 condi damage to back it up (meaning your primarily power and it shouldnt bother you too much) or if you DO have the condi damage to back it up (sinister accessories do a reaaaally good job of this) then there is another burn guardian on the field who is more invested than you are in burning. Meaning he gave up more of his power damage than you did in order to make sure that his burning (which is probably ticking for over a thousand) is ALWAYS on and active.