Guild Wars 2

As a rule of thumb, which is better for Bleed? For Burn? And for Poison? Thanks.

Regardless of which is better, Damage is far more accessible than Duration, which means when making a Condition oriented character you’ll end up going that way no matter what. Beyond that point, it’s a question of what value you place on secondary and tertiary stats. The more Damage you stack, the more valuable (per tier) Duration becomes. But you can’t leap on both stats without sacrificing another, probably defensive, stat.

I was under the impression that the formula for each of the three worked in a way that one of the three benefited significantly more from Duration than Damage, and another more from Damage from Duration. Is this not the case?

mm just thinking out loud now…

if i understand correctly, these all do dmg per tick, per second. so when looking at increasing your duration, try to do a calculation to see if the stats used will be worth it since gw2 “rounds down” the dmg done based on ticks. for e.g. you have a bleed for 5s. and increasing duration by 10% brings you to 5.5s, the condition will last for 5.5s but will only tick for dmg for 5s.

the only thing i can think of is for poison, you might want to increase duration depending, since poison also affects the target’s healing abilities as well.

misc thoughts… take into account your targets ability to cleanse conditions? since many classes are able to do so, mayb stacking condition dmg may be better? as duration might not help if they can cleanse ‘em as soon as you put ’em on. as well as looking into foods like rare veggie pizza, that help both duration and dmg if you’re having a hard time choosing which to focus on.

hope this helps, if even a little.
[edited: took out extra info :pp]

darkace.8925:

As a rule of thumb, which is better for Bleed? For Burn? And for Poison? Thanks.

Bleeding deals damage each second so calculate your +Duration to give a full second for it to be worth it. Bleeds have higher duration so I’d say going for damage is more important than duration, even without duration extention you can keep a lot of bleed stacks.

Burning is affected differently by condition duration because each application stack. If you deal 2.5 seconds of Burning with your attacks you will deal damage 5 times 2,5+2,5=5 If you have a reliant way to spam Burning (with auto attack for example) you can stack duration with small increases e.g assuming that each application deals 2.2 second of burning: 2.2 → 4.4 → 6.6 → 8.8 → 11 so after 5 uses you get an “extra” 1 tick of damage. Just see if you can keep your foe perma-burning for it to be worth it, if you can’t condition duration isn’t a good choice, if you can, go for it.

Poison is best used with duration extention, as most often a party will need poison to reduce healing instead of dealing damage

maddoctor.2738:

Bleeding deals damage each second so calculate your +Duration to give a full second for it to be worth it. Bleeds have higher duration so I’d say going for damage is more important than duration, even without duration extention you can keep a lot of bleed stacks.

well ONE stack of bleeding adds 1 pulse per second, but each additonal stack adds one more tick per second, and well 1 stack of bleeding is useless, you need AT LEAST 10-15+ before bleeding become worthwile

If you use your character for multiple types of play (PvE, sPvP and WvW), i reccomend going condition damage. Condition damage, would make more of burst than duration, which need more time to be effective and can be removed by condition damage while ticking.

So i usually prefer to be more effective (for all the modes).
Condition damage for Bleed, Poison, Confusion and Burn
Condition duration for immobilize, cripple, chilled, weakness and any other condition “effect”.

So… Only if you use it for PvE, the previous calculations from the other topics enter in the equation!

GummiBear.2756:

well ONE stack of bleeding adds 1 pulse per second, but each additonal stack adds one more tick per second, and well 1 stack of bleeding is useless, you need AT LEAST 10-15+ before bleeding become worthwile

Each stack will have a duration for example 3.2seconds so each stack won’t deal more damage if your +condition duration doesn’t exceed 1 second.

If that’s true, then Burning is completely useless, 8 stacks of bleeding equal burning damage at 0 condition damage, 6 stacks of bleeding equal burning damage at 850+ condition damage, and Burning doesn’t even stack

damage for all but poison, do durating because poison affects healing abilities

martyrius.8957:

damage for all but poison, do durating because poison affects healing abilities

Which is only helpful if the opponent uses some form of healing. Many mobs don’t heal at all, and the primary healing spells that players use are almost always on a longer cool down than poison application. So, while poisons effect is maximized against healing, +duration doesn’t necessarily promote this capacity.

In any case, this thread has left out a few essential bits of information which Darkace might need:

Condition damage (except for Confusion) is calculated by Damage per second * Truncated duration. Each condition applies a specific formula to determine its damage per second (the Wiki has more info.). Durations are not standardized, ie., it is not true to say that burn applications are always longer than bleeds, or vice versa. The initial duration depends only on the skill.

So all skills do a standardized amount of damage multiplied by duration. This means +damage can increase your overall damage, and +duration can increase your overall damage. Which is better? Depends on the situation. Imagine dps inside a vacuum: we’re hitting a test dummy. A 5 second burn at level 80 with 500 +condition damage deals 2265 damage. 5 seconds at 750, a 50% increase in condition damage, deals 2577. 6 seconds at 500, a 20% increase in duration, deals 2718.

Obviously a break point occurs where +duration will increase your overall damage more than +damage. But this is on a test dummy. In actuality you’ll have to deal with: condition removal, stack ceilings, multi-source application, and the target having died before the duration finishes out. All of which negatively impact +duration more so than +damage. This makes it very difficult to pinpoint exactly where +duration surpasses +damage purely by the numbers.

Sufficed to say, you’ll always get a reliable benefit from +damage. You’ll get a less reliable, though potentially more productive, benefit from +duration. If you feel you have the leeway to allocate some points into +duration, it won’t hurt to do so. But +duration is your bread-and-butter.

Pinder.5261:

So all skills do a standardized amount of damage multiplied by duration. This means +damage can increase your overall damage, and +duration can increase your overall damage. Which is better? Depends on the situation. Imagine dps inside a vacuum: we’re hitting a test dummy. A 5 second burn at level 80 with 500 +condition damage deals 2265 damage. 5 seconds at 750, a 50% increase in condition damage, deals 2577. 6 seconds at 500, a 20% increase in duration, deals 2718.

Obviously a break point occurs where +duration will increase your overall damage more than +damage. But this is on a test dummy. In actuality you’ll have to deal with: condition removal, stack ceilings, multi-source application, and the target having died before the duration finishes out. All of which negatively impact +duration more so than +damage. This makes it very difficult to pinpoint exactly where +duration surpasses +damage purely by the numbers.

Very enlightening. Much thanks to you (and everyone else). If I said that my interests lied almost exclusively in PvE, would you be inclined to recommend +Duration for Dungeons and +Damage for Dynamic Events?

Pinder.5261:

Sufficed to say, you’ll always get a reliable benefit from +damage. You’ll get a less reliable, though potentially more productive, benefit from +duration. If you feel you have the leeway to allocate some points into +duration, it won’t hurt to do so. But +duration is your bread-and-butter.

Was one of those "+duration"s supposed to be a “+damage”?

Pinder.5261:

Sufficed to say, you’ll always get a reliable benefit from +damage. You’ll get a less reliable, though potentially more productive, benefit from +duration. If you feel you have the leeway to allocate some points into +duration, it won’t hurt to do so. But +damage is your bread-and-butter.

darkace.8925:

Was one of those "+duration"s supposed to be a “+damage”?

Correction on bold. Quite obvious i believe!

Hah, whoops, LHound got it correct. Thanks, guy.