Guild Wars 2

Let me preface this with saying that I don’t want this to end up as a QQ thread. I am genuinely confused and hope that, with your wise and patient guidance I might improve as a player. Or such. Who knows…

I am working under a few assumptions here.
-Condition damage bypasses toughness.
-In terms of armor stats, only Condition Damage affects the damage of conditions.

My initial thoughts were that this was kind of weird because there is an armor set that is Condition Damage + Toughness + Vitality. At first, I thought this was similar to Soldier stats (Power + Toughness + Vitality) but I later realized that Power damage is also greatly affected by Precision and Ferocity. Thus, Soldier gear offers defense with a significant sacrifice in offense. On the flipside, Dire (I think?) offers full Condition Damage offensive stats along with full defensive stats.

From this I concluded that Condi builds were meant to be tanky but rely on doing damage over time. In theory, I thought this was fine, but in practice it seemed very strong. That may be because, as a thief, I cannot clear conditions fast enough or often enough if someone is really trying to ruin my day. It also seems less effective in large group fights (WvW style) than Power based builds.

Then, in the recent raid announcement, I saw a remark about players maybe having to put extra Toughness gear on to protect the Condi builds in the back. This confused me because, in my experience, the Condi builds tend to be the toughest folks around.

I’m guessing that this is less of an enigma to someone with more experience, so…help~? Are there secondary damage stats for Condition Damage? Or some reason to include non-defensive stats alongside it?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature

The first thing that springs to mind is Rampager’s gear, where Precision is the major stat and Power and Condition Damage are the minor ones. This isn’t a very tanky stat selection at all, but I found it particularly useful before the specialisation patch so that I was doing a fair bit of damage on-top of my conditions. It makes for a good all-rounder- eats through folk with high toughness but still kills other things pretty fast too. I used to use it especially on a condi necro in WvW/EotM with wells and fear walls, of course then I would have to stay well back in the zerg or I’d get squished pretty easily.

Sinister gear is similar, but with major Condi Damage instead.

Who knows, perhaps they’ll add more stat variants with HoT? Maybe the enemies can only be damaged once they reach a particular threshold of conditions applied to them? It could be entirely possible that we’ll be seeing new mechanics unlike anything we’ve seen in the game so far.

There is another aspect to condition damage. That is, how many stacks of the damaging conditions can you apply? The more stacks, the more damage. One way to apply stacks (via certain traits and certain sigils) is bleed on crits. Thus, Dire gear (Condition Damage, Toughness and Vitality) may provide a high condi damage stat, but is going to have a much harder time maxing stacks.

At the moment though, burning is above bleeds, torment and confusion in terms of damage per tick, so with a profession that can stack burning (engineer, elementalist, guardian), the gap between Dire and the less tanky Condi damage stat combos is less.

Yeah I don’t particularly like how direct damage has 3 attributes related to it but condition damage only has 1 (from equipment). The highest damage “condi” builds isn’t even pure condition damage, but a mix of power and condition damage.

Right now (to the best of my knowledge) it’s impossible to match a direct damage build’s DPS via only condition damage. There isn’t anything wrong with this (or Dire would be hilariously OP) except for the lack of variety.

What I’d like to see: introduce condition duration and a third attribute that somehow enhances conditions. Then a build focusing on condi damage, condi duration, and this third attribute should be dealing around the same DPS as zerkers.

What a lot of people seem to ignore is that a condi build also does direkt damage
with most of their attacks, so power and precision still boost your damage.
Also a lot of traits trigger on critical hits so that high precsision is also very welcome
on condi builds.

Secondary damage stats mostly come frome runes and sigills like more condi duration
or since burning is at the moment the best condition, more burning duration.
Runes of Balthasar are actually not bad if you have a build with quite some burning.

For example if i use an Engineer and just camp bombs with rampagers gear and
Balthasar Runes and the Sigill that gives 20% burning duration i have 8 seconds
burning on my 2 skill what is also the recast, and i have constant 2k burning
per tick and also 2k direkt damage.

Ofc there are mor skills for more burning .. but the direct damage is still something
that still makes a part of your total damage.

Altair.8402:

Yeah I don’t particularly like how direct damage has 3 attributes related to it but condition damage only has 1 (from equipment). The highest damage “condi” builds isn’t even pure condition damage, but a mix of power and condition damage.

Right now (to the best of my knowledge) it’s impossible to match a direct damage build’s DPS via only condition damage. There isn’t anything wrong with this (or Dire would be hilariously OP) except for the lack of variety.

What I’d like to see: introduce condition duration and a third attribute that somehow enhances conditions. Then a build focusing on condi damage, condi duration, and this third attribute should be dealing around the same DPS as zerkers.

There are 3 stats that directly affect condition damage, the same as there is for direct damage.

They are condition damage, condition duration, and precision.

Maxing the 3 of those will give you the highest possible condition damage.

I think it would be more accurate to say that condi builds lose much less damage from dropping an offensive stat. While carrion will not do as much damage as berserker, it’ll survive longer and doesn’t lose as much from taking time out of combat.

Condi trait lines also tend to give you a good chunk of crit on their own, and proc on crit things tend to have an ICD. Sword warriors get fury + 20% crit pretty effortlessly.

Power = condition damage
Precision = Precision
Ferocity = Condition duration

You are losing significant dps if you are not maximizing condition duration and precision.

sure each stack of bleed might be doing the same amount per tick, but you’ll have 50-60% less stacks on the enemy if you don’t take the other stats.

Different classes play slightly differently as well. Warriors for instance don’t have a pure condition build. All their builds are hybrid. They require high power and condition damage because they have a much lower base condition damage than other classes due to their trait setups. However to offset this they get a higher base crit chance and more direct damage.

Necromancers on the other hand gain absolutely nothing from power on their condition weapon. They apply long duration bleeds and in order to get good damage you need to obtain higher stacks of bleeds via condition duration and bleeds on crits.

There is also a more important consideration for conditions as well. They may bypass armor, but in exchange your damage can be wiped away completely by condition clears. Spend 20 seconds getting 20 stacks of bleed on the target? Too bad they just completely removed all 20 stacks instantly and you do no damage at all now. This gives direct damage a significant advantage over conditions because there is a whole extra category of ways to negate your damage completely.

Also, condi builds can ramp up to do a bunch of damage, without much spike damage in the opening moments of the fight… zerk builds rather, are very spikey. As in, they hit peak damage moments into the fight, then level off durring cooldowns, and spike again when th3 cd’s are up. Condi’s tend to “ramp up” to thier peak dps.

Case and point… when measuring dps of zerk builds vs condi builds, the longer the mob is alive, the more damage they do to it.

Also, on condition durration.

Durration is favorable over damage if the fights are longer… if you stack enough durration to increase the ammount of ticks by 1, it will amost always be more damage than having all the ticks hit harder. At least, in the case of burning. Bleeding may be the other way round. Exanple, with bs numbers. If burning ticks for 700 with 1000 condition dmg, and 800 with 1200 condi dmg … or, gets one more tick by stacking durration instead of the 200 bonus condi dmg. You have gained 600 dmg, rather than 100 per tick…

Though itbis worth noting, against trash mobs, damage is always better, because they won’t live long enough for the extra tick to matter…. but against bosses, durration is better (after a point) to ensure more damage.

Just remember to only push your duration up to the nearest whole number. A 3 second burn ticks the same as a 3 1/4 second burn.

I’ve been away for a year, but unless there have been changes, the problem with condi builds is the cap on condition damage on the mob in question in group content. That is, if the boss is capped adding a condition player means that she will only be doing white damage. Contrast this with a direct damage class/build where all of their damage is accounted for.

Until condition damage is managed as damage over time by player condi builds will always be viewed as sub-par in terms of group content. And, btw, this is how DoT damage is managed in other games like WoW where it’s conceivable for an affliction warlock to be top DPS as all of their damage is counted against the encounter. Anet has played the “I’m sorry but the servers can’t do that” card but of course they can as that is how it’s done generally.

Condi builds are fine in certain game modes but don’t work well across general PvE. Of course, they are fine for leveling and soloing content. Just don’t try to destroy environmental destructibles, leave that to a warrior.

BrokenGlass.9356:

Just remember to only push your duration up to the nearest whole number. A 3 second burn ticks the same as a 3 1/4 second burn.

They actually fixed that over a year ago. Conditions do partial ticks when they fall off now so you can count the 1/4.

The exception is necromancers terror. That will not tick partial damage because the game doesn’t consider it a condition. Presumably the same will apply to reapers chill.

Raine.1394:

I’ve been away for a year, but unless there have been changes, the problem with condi builds is the cap on condition damage on the mob in question in group content. That is, if the boss is capped adding a condition player means that she will only be doing white damage. Contrast this with a direct damage class/build where all of their damage is accounted for.

Until condition damage is managed as damage over time by player condi builds will always be viewed as sub-par in terms of group content. And, btw, this is how DoT damage is managed in other games like WoW where it’s conceivable for an affliction warlock to be top DPS as all of their damage is counted against the encounter. Anet has played the “I’m sorry but the servers can’t do that” card but of course they can as that is how it’s done generally.

Condi builds are fine in certain game modes but don’t work well across general PvE. Of course, they are fine for leveling and soloing content. Just don’t try to destroy environmental destructibles, leave that to a warrior.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/combat-changes-dotsanddashes/

You’re about 3 months late to the party

The defensive stats you’re seeing in Dire are more or less intended to ensure you live long enough for your condition damage to stick, since damage over time relies on being survivable.
But, take a look at the Sinister set for damage:
Condition Damage Power Precision
Condition builds aren’t purely condition, and in many cases, they rely on on-critical effects for additional stacks of conditions. Power and precision also lend a little to their ‘white’ damage.

Condition damage ‘magnifies’ a little differently than Power x Ferocity x Precision. Condition duration gives you more concurrent stacks, as do the ticks from on-critical applications. It also grows based the number of different types of conditions that you can apply. 25 bleeding stacks isn’t going to be as effective as 12 bleed, 3 burn, 5 torment, and 5 poison.

Altair.8402:

The highest damage “condi” builds isn’t even pure condition damage, but a mix of power and condition damage.

Bingo. A lot of condition builds are hybrids of conditions and regular damage.

Sube Dai.8496:

There are 3 stats that directly affect condition damage, the same as there is for direct damage.

They are condition damage, condition duration, and precision.

Maxing the 3 of those will give you the highest possible condition damage.

I dont think condition damage can crit so why do you need precision?

Spartacus.3192:

Sube Dai.8496:

There are 3 stats that directly affect condition damage, the same as there is for direct damage.

They are condition damage, condition duration, and precision.

Maxing the 3 of those will give you the highest possible condition damage.

I dont think condition damage can crit so why do you need precision?

E.g., https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Barbed_Precision Necro
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sharpened_Edges Ranger
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Radiant_Fire Gaurd
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ankle_Shots Thief
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Precise_Strikes Warrior
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Incendiary_Powder Engineer
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_Infusion Mesmer
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burning_Precision Elementalist

+ all on-crit sigils

I’m kind of wondering how big of a difference they really make though. The bleeds all have a very short base duration (2-3 seconds), the sigils and all other conditions have an internal cooldown.

Servanin.5021:

I’m kind of wondering how big of a difference they really make though. The bleeds all have a very short base duration (2-3 seconds), the sigils and all other conditions have an internal cooldown.

Some are more useful than others (e.g., Radiant Fire and Critical Infusion > Barbed Precision) Shrug . I find the low-damage passive condi’s to be most useful for baiting cleanses like plague sending, for example, which can ruin a condi-build’s day: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Plague_Sending.

Edit: Also, what this guy V said

Servanin.5021:

I’m kind of wondering how big of a difference they really make though. The bleeds all have a very short base duration (2-3 seconds), the sigils and all other conditions have an internal cooldown.

3 seconds + 100% duration if you are properly geared/food/utilities/runes = 6 second duration = 2-3 extra stacks if you have fury and can crit consistently = 4-500 extra dps from the traits, plus a similar amount from the sigils.

They are pretty important, even more important for some builds. Warriors get almost all their bleeds from crits for instance.