Guild Wars 2

Alot of weapons have Condition Damage, but there is the few Giver’s weapons that add a total of 20%, 10% on 1h and 20% on 2h.

Which is actually more effective?

My gut instinct is the duration since it adds 20% duration damage, the culmination of 6 pieces of gear, runes in the gear and the condition damage on the jewelry.

You’re correct. Max out condi duration to 100%, then focus on condi damage. That’s the down and dirty tl;dr version.

However, you shouldn’t use giver’s equipment to maximize condi duration. Use viper’s gear for that.

giver’s weapons are sheetty never use them, like tentonhammr said, use vipers. Once you hit 100% condi duration with food, gear, runes/sigils for your top damaging conditions, you can start prioritizing on condition damage. If you can’t even get remotely close to 100% then personally i find it useless and just use w/e u have. Min max your gear or don’t bother at all are your 2 choices.

I don’t see any of this Viper’s gear on the Auction hall.

Viper gear can only be crafted and is acc bound

Ah, I’m not a crafter so I’ll just be going with Giver’s stuff.

You can get an exotic Viper’s box from the HoT story
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Box_of_Viper's_Gear

giver’s are a waste of gold for condi setup. Usually you can reach the 100% cap without sacrificing so many stats, through correct traits, runes and sigils.
for instance for +condition damage main runes check
rune of the nightmare(+15% on all condi duration),
rune of the krait(+45% bleed duration),
rune of balthazar(+45%burn duration)
rune of the afflicted (+30% bleed duration,+15% poison duration)
rune of the thorns(+45% poison duration)
rune of torment (+45% torment duration)
rune of perplexity(+30% confusion duration)
for sigils,
sigil of malice(+10% on all condis duration), sigil of agony (+20% bleed duration),
sigil of smoldering (+20% burn duration), sigil of venom (+20% poison duration)

top tier condi food gives a total of +30% condi duration so all of the above with the addition of traits is usually more than enough to cap out on condi duration
The choices depends of course on the class you want to run and what your main source of damage is going to be.

I used to run givers before hots came out and I have to say it’s a waste of money. The biggest problem with givers is that the only offensive portion of gear is the precision, and that’s just a minor trait. As mentioned above, there’s many ways of achieving a large percent of condition duration without sacrificing stats.

Base damage is still a large portion of condition builds and if you’re not willing throw in the gold to craft for it I wouldn’t bother with it at all.

AreeSoothsayer.1068:

Which is actually more effective?

Unless you specify PvE, PvP or WvW then the answer will always be different.

In PvE for example, duration or damage is pretty irrelevant – whether you hit static dumb boss for 100 damage over 10s or 1000 damage over 1s on a 10s cooldown… it’s the same thing.

In WvW, everything change since it heavily depend on the opposition you meet and the length of combat. Same thing for PvP. Sometimes you meet bunker classes with lots of instant cleanses, you want high condi damage against those but duration is more or less irrelevant until they have no cleanses left. Against classes with less cleansing and high dps/evasive moves you want tons of duration in order to damage them while they run away.

Either way condi duration gear is generally not needed unless you min/max a glass cannon with all damage to condis. I run rabid/celestial on my p/p engineer and I reach 98% burning duration (I cry for those missing 2% every time I look at it).

I’m gonna throw this tidbit into the conversation cuz i’m curious to see what opinions are on this. One of the arguments I’ve heard against condition duration as opposed to condition damage is that it stretches your damage out over time, so unless you are using the character for content that has a lot of boss fights (fractals, raids, WB, etc) where the fight is gonna last a long time, you end up losing damage because the creature dies before your damage finishes ticking, so it’s possibly better to beef up the damage so it bursts more than it drags out.

Thoughts?

bearshaman.3421:

I’m gonna throw this tidbit into the conversation cuz i’m curious to see what opinions are on this. One of the arguments I’ve heard against condition duration as opposed to condition damage is that it stretches your damage out over time, so unless you are using the character for content that has a lot of boss fights (fractals, raids, WB, etc) where the fight is gonna last a long time, you end up losing damage because the creature dies before your damage finishes ticking, so it’s possibly better to beef up the damage so it bursts more than it drags out.

Thoughts?

It depends on what you’re doing but in most cases you’re better off with duration for PvE. It’s also not about stretching damage out but being able to add more condition stacks.

bearshaman.3421:

I’m gonna throw this tidbit into the conversation cuz i’m curious to see what opinions are on this. One of the arguments I’ve heard against condition duration as opposed to condition damage is that it stretches your damage out over time, so unless you are using the character for content that has a lot of boss fights (fractals, raids, WB, etc) where the fight is gonna last a long time, you end up losing damage because the creature dies before your damage finishes ticking, so it’s possibly better to beef up the damage so it bursts more than it drags out.

Thoughts?

Condition duration doesn’t spread your existing damage out over more time. Your conditions still do the same damage per second, but they have more seconds to cause damage. As you say, you could just have higher condition dmg stat, but because viper’s gives both damage and duration, it outperforms other stat combos that only give condition dmg.

Conditions in general need time to ramp up. I think what you’re thinking of its the condition vs direct damage argument. In open world, the argument is moot because trash mobs die quickly regardless of damage type. Dungeons are the only PvE content where you may be better off with direct damage.

onevstheworld.2419:

bearshaman.3421:

I’m gonna throw this tidbit into the conversation cuz i’m curious to see what opinions are on this. One of the arguments I’ve heard against condition duration as opposed to condition damage is that it stretches your damage out over time, so unless you are using the character for content that has a lot of boss fights (fractals, raids, WB, etc) where the fight is gonna last a long time, you end up losing damage because the creature dies before your damage finishes ticking, so it’s possibly better to beef up the damage so it bursts more than it drags out.

Thoughts?

Condition duration doesn’t spread your existing damage out over more time. Your conditions still do the same damage per second, but they have more seconds to cause damage. As you say, you could just have higher condition dmg stat, but because viper’s gives both damage and duration, it outperforms other stat combos that only give condition dmg.

Conditions in general need time to ramp up. I think what you’re thinking of its the condition vs direct damage argument. In open world, the argument is moot because trash mobs die quickly regardless of damage type. Dungeons are the only PvE content where you may be better off with direct damage.

Actually it was in discussions whether sinister or viper was better, because you get a higher condi damage stat with sinister. In general I’d agree with Viper being the superior option, just curious if any had any thoughts on it. The reason I said it was more bursty was that each tick would do more damage with sinister, you just get more ticks with viper, so which was better, that’s all.

AreeSoothsayer.1068:

Ah, I’m not a crafter so I’ll just be going with Giver’s stuff.

Just ask in your guild or map-chat if anyone would be willing to craft the gear for you (provided you supply the mats). Sure, you run the risk of someone running off with your stuff, but most people wouldn’t do that in this community.

Razor.9872:

AreeSoothsayer.1068:

Ah, I’m not a crafter so I’ll just be going with Giver’s stuff.

Just ask in your guild or map-chat if anyone would be willing to craft the gear for you (provided you supply the mats). Sure, you run the risk of someone running off with your stuff, but most people wouldn’t do that in this community.

That won’t work. Viper’s is account bound so he needs to craft it himself.

onevstheworld.2419:

Razor.9872:

AreeSoothsayer.1068:

Ah, I’m not a crafter so I’ll just be going with Giver’s stuff.

Just ask in your guild or map-chat if anyone would be willing to craft the gear for you (provided you supply the mats). Sure, you run the risk of someone running off with your stuff, but most people wouldn’t do that in this community.

That won’t work. Viper’s is account bound so he needs to craft it himself.

Oh, really? I wasn’t aware. Nvm then.