Guild Wars 2

I’ve been experimenting with some traits and equipment that focus on condition damage, and I wanted to make sure I understand the mechanics of this attribute correctly since on the surface it seems underwhelming. For example when I look at the Power attribute, it equates 1 to 1 with attack damage. In other words, for every 1 power I gain, my attack damage potential goes up by 1.

Condition damage however is not 1 to 1. I need to invest 4 points in condition damage to get 1 damage for burning, I need to invest 10 points to get 1 damage for poison, and I need to invest 20 points to get 1 damage for bleeding.

Taking bleeding as an example, if I have 500 condition damage, have I just added 25 damage per pulse? So for a 10 second bleed I’ve done 250 damage?

My apologies if I’m totally getting the mechanic wrong, but wanted to get some feedback. If my understanding is correct, it seems like I’d rather have 500 extra power than 500 condition damage, even for a condition-based build.

That would be correct if the ticks were once every second. However, with bleeds, it does not stack duration per say, it stacks intensity. With my ranger, when I attack someone once with a shortbow, the bleed lasts for 5 seconds and then goes away. If I hit them twice, it lasts for 5 seconds + how long it took me to fire my second shot, but the bleed ticks twice as fast.

So I’m getting a slightly longer bleed duration (simply because I shot again), but I am getting a drastically higher damage output the more I hit the target. Plus the ability to add quickness and sharpening stone, the Ranger’s potential to add bleed goes up extremely fast because you are firing quicker and getting 2 stacks per hit, thereby making the ticks go faster seeing as you are able to keep more stacks on target.

Hopefully that was able to clear it up for you.

That helps – thank you. Based on that, it sounds like a build revolving around Condition Damage is most effective only when you can reliably put on multiple stacks of a condition. But if I’m only able to put on one stack of something like poison, a big investment in Condition Damage isn’t as well-spent as it would be in Power. Sound about right?

Yep, sounds right. Some classes can’t reliably put on conditions. At least not enough to warrant a build based on conditions. Only consider condition builds on classes that have weapons where the default attack (or an attack in the default chain) applies a condition. Or classes that have buffs (that can be used often) that give you conditions on every hit.