Guild Wars 2

Hi guys, I was going over this link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_damage
Which is the “Condition Damage” Wiki page – and I couldn’t help seeing the difference in “Burning Damage” and everything else. It does so much more damage than all the rest of the conditions.
Bleeding 0.05 42.5 per stack per second +5 per stack per second
Burning 0.25 328 per second +25 per second
Poison 0.10 84 per second +10 per second
Confusion¹ 0.15 130 per stack per skill use +15 per stack per skill use
Fear² 0.30 362 per second +30 per second
Torment³ 0.11 32 per stack per second +11 per stack per second

Actual damage per second/attack per stack = Base Damage + (Factor * Condition Damage)

^ Confusion deals half damage in Structured PvP and WvW.
^ Only causes damage under the effects of Terror (the IX necromancer trait under Curses).
^ Deals two damage packets per second while moving.

Not only is it’s damage really high, it’s factor is the highest (apart for necro fear w/ curses).
Is there something I’m missing or is it just really way stronger than the others?
Even with 25 Bleed stacks it would only do half the damage that Burning does at base damage.
What am I missing?

You’re misunderstanding it.

Each stack of bleeding does 42.5 + 0.05 x condition damage. That is, 25 stacks of Bleeding will do 1,062.5 + 1.25 x condition damage worth of damage per second, which is more than three times that of Burning.

In fact, Burning will always be equal to about 6-7 stacks of bleeding, assuming identical amounts of condition damage.

The reason Burning has such high base damage becomes apparent if you compare it with the others:

• Unlike Bleeding and Confusion, Burning stacks duration rather than intensity
• Unlike Poison, Burning does not have an additional effect other than damage
• Fear only deals damage with a Necromancer that has traited for it

That is to say, Poison makes up for the lower damage by being useful. Bleeding and Confusion are actually better than Burning most of the time due to stacking intensity and Fear is a unique case.

Torment isn’t really something to consider since access to it is very limited.

The +X per second, isn’t per stack. It’s per stack if you add an extra 100 condition damage. It’s just a quick way of showing the factor.

At base lvl 80 with no condition damage:
25 stacks of bleed will do 1062.5 damage/sec (42.5*25)
Burning will always do 328 damage/sec
(a difference of 734.5 in favor of bleeds)

There’s two things to keep in mind here. How the condition stacks and also how they scale.
Bleeds have a scaling factor of 0.05
Burning scale by 0.25
So with an extra 100 condition damage,
25 stacks of bleed will do 1187.5 damage/sec (47.5*25)
Burning will always do 353 damage/sec
(a difference of 834.5 in favor of bleeds)

So technically, if you can keep 25 stacks constantly up you’ll be doing 100 more dam/sec with bleeds over burn. I don’t see how 25 bleed stacks do half the damage that burning does at base, 42.5×25 > 328.

Edit: ah, you beat me to it Olba. Also the stacking of burning could be argued is better in a group setting, compared to bleeds. I know there are builds can stack bleeds to 25 stacks (or close to it) by themselves, throw another person who uses bleeds, and one of you is kinda useless. At least with burns you’re stacking intensity (and I can’t think of any builds that have perma burn by themselves off the top of my head)

Wow, thanks guys. Yeah, i misunderstood the equation.
If this is true, why is burning so meta right now?

The duration of Burning is (in most cases) is MUCH shorter than other conditions. Most skills provide 1 – 3 sec with a few going as high kitten – 6 sec.

If you are trying to kill something quickly (like in PvP), applying strong pressure immediately (like you can with a single burn) is a better option than having to apply 7 stacks to get the same DoT. Also, how much work you have to perform (and how long it took) to apply X DoT is important when it can all be brought back to zero in a single Condition Removal. That is why the FEAR component of a TERROR traited Necro is considered by many to be OP as it can’t be self removed.

Not a PvPer so I could have translated what I have heard about the issue incorrectly, but that’s my take on those conditions.

Brother Grimm.5176:

The duration of Burning is (in most cases) is MUCH shorter than other conditions. Most skills provide 1 – 3 sec with a few going as high kitten – 6 sec.

If you are trying to kill something quickly (like in PvP), applying strong pressure immediately (like you can with a single burn) is a better option than having to apply 7 stacks to get the same DoT. Also, how much work you have to perform (and how long it took) to apply X DoT is important when it can all be brought back to zero in a single Condition Removal. That is why the FEAR component of a TERROR traited Necro is considered by many to be OP as it can’t be self removed.

Not a PvPer so I could have translated what I have heard about the issue incorrectly, but that’s my take on those conditions.

That’s how I have always looked at it. No matter how many stacks of a condition there are, one removal and it is all gone. Players will do two things with conditions. 1) Only take off the ones that they find most dangerous. 2) Take them off only when they start stacking too high.

This calculator might help too:

http://gw2.hazno.net/