Guild Wars 2

For those that listened to the presentation yesterday, it was strongly hinted that burning (and poison) are becoming INTENSITY stackable (not duration). At the moment:

Bleeding stacks intensity:
(0.05 * Condition Damage) + (0.5 * Level) + 2.5 per stack per second
(0.05 * Condition Damage) + 42.5 per stack per second at level 80
**Sidenote – There are many, many more sources of Bleeding than Burning

Burning stacks duration:
(0.25 * Condition Damage) + (4 * Level) + 8 damage per second
(0.25 * Condition Damage) + 328 damage per second at Level 80 (per stack??)

The problem:

1. Burning stacking will be massively superior at x7.7 Bleeding DPS unless we severely reduce the stack limit.

2. To lower max DPS along the lines of Bleeding, reducing the Burning stack limit by (max Bleeding stack / 7.7) will result in an incredibly small stack. ex: Even at 100 max Bleeding stacks, the equivalent would only be around 13 max Burning stacks, which goes against Anets plan to raise condi caps and make condi builds more viable in PvE.

3. Lowering Burning DPS and raising the Burning stacks still leaves it as a superior bleeding clone and doesn’t promote interesting gameplay.

[Added later]:
4. They could also make Burning stacks shorter duration but higher DPS like in GW1, but higher DPS w/ shorter duration is still always the superior condition to low dps w/ longer duration (Bleeding) because there is greater dmg pressure and less of a chance to cleanse before 100% damage has been dealt.

Idea:
Have Burning deal initially less DPS than bleeding, but bonus damage if foe is NOT moving.

I understand some players will say, “This is the exact opposite of Torment.” Yes, but this reminded me when some players were complaining that Taunt was just an opposite-direction Fear…maybe, but you can’t insta-kill zergs with Taunt unless you can hover in mid air, lol. Anyway,

1. Sources of Torment are incredibly rare. Burning has many more sources in comparison.

2. To counter Torment bonus dmg you do one thing: stand still. This is really annoying because interesting gameplay involves having options. For Burning, the enemy would sometimes have 360’ of movement to choose from, or he may be being set up for an even worse trap. In WvW, this could be another way to force wall campers out of a position, similar to using AOE but condition-based.

3. Extra damage with Torment is triggerable by Fear and Taunt (both very few sources, ESPECIALLY if Anet goes ahead with restricting Taunt to HoT class content only), BUT indirectly by AOEing the enemy position (many sources). Extra damage from Burning would be directly sustainable by chaining stuns and knockdowns (decent # of sources), or if depleting the Breakbar grounds the boss.

One argument might be that this benefits stacking in dungeons. If a condition build is actually welcomed in dungeons, good.

Anyway was just an idea.

Scientia.8924:

Burning stacking will be massively superior at x7.7 Bleeding DPS unless we severely reduce the stack limit.

That’s only true if it’s as easy to apply burn as it is to apply bleed and if the applied stacks are the same duration. Neither of these is true AFAIK.

ESPECIALLY if Anet goes ahead with restricting Taunt to HoT class content only

We already know of at least one instance of a core profession getting taunt, namely rangers using one of their grandmaster traits in the beastmastery line.

Diovid.9506:

Scientia.8924:

Burning stacking will be massively superior at x7.7 Bleeding DPS unless we severely reduce the stack limit.

That’s only true if it’s as easy to apply burn as it is to apply bleed and if the applied stacks are the same duration. Neither of these is true AFAIK.

ESPECIALLY if Anet goes ahead with restricting Taunt to HoT class content only

We already know of at least one instance of a core profession getting taunt, namely rangers using one of their grandmaster traits in the beastmastery line.

1. Agreed, I mentioned that bleeding has more sources than burning. To differentiate burning from bleeding, they could make Burning stacks shorter duration but higher DPS like in GW1, but higher DPS w/ shorter duration is still always the superior condition to low dps w/ longer duration (Bleeding) because there is greater dmg pressure and less of a chance to cleanse before 100% damage has been dealt.

2. Ah okay, was unaware of that. I still think Taunt will have very few sources, as to add Taunt to ANY core skill would completely change its mechanic.

They’ll likely take the simplest solution – burning is now the same as bleeding. It definitely won’t stay as is because burning was originally balanced around being equivalent to a certain amount of bleeding. If they wanted to play off the idea of fire, burning would be like torment (moving/wind + fire = bigger fire) and/or deal a higher amount of damage at first and lessen over time (like a fire going out).

Scientia.8924:

**Sidenote – There are many, many more sources of Bleeding than Burning

Burning however has combos. Drop a fire field on top of a zerg and suddenly there’s 20+ stacks of burning.

Well maybe you missed it but the devs pointed out that the damage ticks from Burning/Poison (shown through skill facts) were lower than they are now because they are stackable.

Of course, it wouldn’t be too interesting to just have another Bleeding clone, but you don’t need to worry about burning maintaining its x7 damange per second vs bleeding or anything. The devs are definitely keeping their eyes on it.

Another idea:

Why not something similar to now, just stackable by multi-players? i.e. Burning still stacks in duration, but it only stacks your duration’s stack. Someone else applying burning will apply a new stack that they can also stack for duration. If you have 10 people, you can stack 10 stacks of burning. You get the idea.

I guess you listened to the presentation but didn’t watch it?

They showed off the new burning damage. based on the video it looks like it will take ~10 stacks of burning to equal 1 stack of current burning. It seemed to stack in a very odd manner. One stack did 320 dps… 2 stacks did 380 dps, 3 stacks did 440 dps. The damage formula must be different.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I guess you listened to the presentation but didn’t watch it?

They showed off the new burning damage. based on the video it looks like it will take ~10 stacks of burning to equal 1 stack of current burning. It seemed to stack in a very odd manner. One stack did 320 dps… 2 stacks did 380 dps, 3 stacks did 440 dps. The damage formula must be different.

Did you check the durations? Tooltips were displaying total damage over the course of the condition.

ronpierce.2760:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I guess you listened to the presentation but didn’t watch it?

They showed off the new burning damage. based on the video it looks like it will take ~10 stacks of burning to equal 1 stack of current burning. It seemed to stack in a very odd manner. One stack did 320 dps… 2 stacks did 380 dps, 3 stacks did 440 dps. The damage formula must be different.

Did you check the durations? Tooltips were displaying total damage over the course of the condition.

I didn’t see the guardian part, but necro applied 1 stack of burning for 3.5 seconds on each life blast. The tick on a golem was 320 per tick for 1 stack, 380 for two stacks and 440 for 3 stacks.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

ronpierce.2760:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I guess you listened to the presentation but didn’t watch it?

They showed off the new burning damage. based on the video it looks like it will take ~10 stacks of burning to equal 1 stack of current burning. It seemed to stack in a very odd manner. One stack did 320 dps… 2 stacks did 380 dps, 3 stacks did 440 dps. The damage formula must be different.

Did you check the durations? Tooltips were displaying total damage over the course of the condition.

I didn’t see the guardian part, but necro applied 1 stack of burning for 3.5 seconds on each life blast. The tick on a golem was 320 per tick for 1 stack, 380 for two stacks and 440 for 3 stacks.

Im sure they will nerf the Dhuumfire like they always do, but take into account the blast on top of the added burning stacks so to compensate lowering the burning damage to about lets say 280 per stack for a total of 840 burning damage per tick of course I left out the calcalations for runes that increase the burning damage.

I’d rather it stayed the same but stacks are from different players.

Or

Give burning a diminishing damage so its the bursty condition like it loses 20% of its damage per tick but is like 3-5 times bleed damage per stack at first.

edit: just read the other posts and found out that both of these have been suggested.

Pardon the slight necro, but I had to add that making burning do more damage to stationary targets sounds like a really awesome idea.

I’m really disappointed to see the change to burning is a simple “stacks in intensity” that makes it not much different than bleeding from a tactical perspective. If ANet did something like this bonus to make an interesting dynamic between burning/bleeding/torment it would be awesome.

PLUS, I bet they could reuse code from torment to implement it, so it wouldn’t even take a major overhaul under the hood…