(edited by Njordstar.2679)
Physical vs. Condition Damage - A Guide
Condition Damage:
Conditions are applied by either effects in weapon skills, slot skills (utility and elite) or equipment (sigil, runes). The skill has to hit, so it just behaves like physical damage for “apply”!
Not all conditions deal damage, and there are two types of conditions:
- Stacking: Stacking conditions (Bleeding, Vulnerability, Torment, Confusion) add a new stack when applied up to 25 stacks overall. Each stack has an individual duration time defined by the character who applied it. Same is true for a damage value if present. When 25 stacks are applied, applying a new one will remove the oldest (applied wise, not duration wise!). Note: Wiki is not clear on this. It is possible that new effects are ignored just as wiki clearly states that for queuing conditions!
- Queuing: Queuing conditions (Poison, Burning, Chill, Cripple, Immobilize, Blind, Fear, Weakness) are present or not. Applying queuing conditions (if already present) extend the duration; it will build a queue. The queue length is limited, for e.g. Poison it is NINE. Further appliance of poison is ignored until the oldest effect wears off. Each element has a duration and (if present) value defined by the applying character.
In any case, each condition is ONE condition when it comes to condition removal. So regardless of the amount of stacks, removing the condition will remove ALL stacks at once!
Duration of conditions are defined by the condition source. Duration can be extended by Condition Duration which is influenced by equipment (runes, not displayed in Condition Duration!) and traits.
Damaging conditions each have a formula for the damage per second:
effect-specific multiplier * Condition Damage + effect-specific damage offset * Level + effect-specific level offset
For Bleeding for instance it is:
0.05 * Condition Damage + 0.5 * Level + 2.5
Each stack/queue element is calculated ONCE per second. So a duration of x.5 seconds will discard the .5-duration. This can btw. be seen in the tooltips as well when extending/shorten duration by e.g. changing gear.
Damage from conditions are (un)modified by:
- Conditions can never critically hit
- Conditions cannot glance
- Conditions profit from Might (as it adds Condition Damage) and presumably Vulnerability Note: Wiki is not clear on this
- Protection does not reduce condition damage
(edited by Njordstar.2679)
Comparing physical to condition damage:
While condition damage usually displays high amounts of damage in the tooltips, you have to keep in mind that this is a damage over time (dot) effect. So comparing these two damage types is very much depending on the type of enemy, primarily on his armor (physical reduction) and hitpoints.
Also, each character builds up Power (physical damage) with levels (916 at lvl 80), while Condition Damage stays at 0. There is always an offset in favor of physical damage, but that advantage is possibly nullified by the enemies defense. Note: Ascendend plate armor gives a defense value of 920 (without shield).
I did a small benchmark comparing different attacks (the benchmark was not too precise), but it seems that high-damage physical builds will ALWAYS outperform high-damage condition builds.
So why would (focusing on) conditions make sense at all:
- Conditions deal damage even if you don’t actually ‘interact’ with the enemy
- Conditions are too sever to NOT handle them. You make players use condition removal skills instead of adding additional damage dealing utility skills. Also you influence the choice of traits (this refers to WvW/PvP mainly)
- Esp. long duration conditions prevent characters to early “fall out of combat” which postpones regeneration
Conclussion:
Mainly due to the fact that conditions stack (stacks or queue) which is very limited, focusing on conditions makes close to no sense if you play in groups. In rather static groups (e.g. dungeon raider) you should make sure that stacking of DOTs does not prevent high-damage dot-er from dealing damage because someone else applies a blocking stack. So when in doubt: DON’T PLAY CONDITION FOCUSSED SPECS IN GROUPS (which include WvW, Boss Raids, …).
For Single/really small Groups, condition focussed builds may have their place, but it seems to me that most classes provide a physical damage build which outperformes the condition dealer.
So far, so good….
Nordstern
One additional comment about “buff” vs. “debuff”:
When simply putting it damage wise, the best effect you can have is the boon “Might”. It exceeds the condition “Vulnerability” by far (per stack). The break-even if you like is somewhere way beyond 3000 Power (for physical damage) so Might is superior in nearly every situation.