Guild Wars 2

Hi there. I am very new still and wondering what condition attack does over the (im assuming) normal power attack damage. I am looking over builds and I see different “condition” and “power” builds. I don’t see much explanation except that “power” builds offer more critical? Please help. I’m so confused.

Condition damage chips away at the target’s health over time, either periodically or—in the case of the likes of confusion—when a requirement for triggering damage is met. Power, on the other hand, only affects direct strikes, some of which may inflict conditions.

It depends on how your char is set up, with regards to traits and armour/equipment bonuses (namely those boosting condition duration and condition damage), but piling on conditions can be nasty for the target. Confusion can particularly be nasty if you’re forced to fight while under it, and you have no means of removing it fast enough (even if you have a skill with cond removal, it’s not much help while it recharges, after all) and without it just being re-applied right after.

But on the other hand, if the target has effective condition removal, conversion or transferring, you’re… kinda stuffed there.

See also: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

Thanks for the replies. @Powerless, In laymens terms to me it sounds like your saying Condition is like DoT+Condition damage. Power is Base Attack+chance of DoT(condition)., going to go over the wiki ty.

das Keks.5403:

See also: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

According to Wiki condition damage seems like a kind of “spirit” damage that is not mitigated by armor that doesn’t crit. I still don’t get conditions and condition damage though. Im not sure how this stacks/boosts eachother. Some clarification would help. For example if I used a poison and it put a (im guessing here) condition of “poison” would my condition damage apply to every DoT(damage over time) poison “condition”? If not can you help me wrap my mind around this. I’ve played mmo’s before so the more simple the better. Thanks.

From what I can understand:

A foe can be inflicted with just about every unique condition the game in one go, and that foe will suffer damage from all of them at once.

Each time you apply a condition to a foe, a “stack” for that condition is added, up to a maximum number of stacks that can be active for each condition at a time. If the foe already has the maximum stacks of that condition, any new applications will be disregarded until a stack expires, at which point, a new stack can be applied.

Conditions can either stack intensity or duration. In the case of intensity, the condition damage of the new stack is added to the condition damage of every other stack already on the foe and will remain until the duration of the entire stack runs out.

In the case of duration, the stack order is arranged in such a way that the stack with the greatest amount of damage takes priority. The rest of the stack cannot apply damage until that top stack expires. So, say you inflicted burning on a foe, and then someone else with greater condition damage inflicted burning too, while the original effect was still going. When that happens, your weaker burning will essentially pause and make way for the stronger one until its duration runs out. When that happens, the weaker one will take over again for the remainder of its duration.

I hope that made any kind of sense, but if you need further clarification, feel free to ask.

SJStriker.4976:

if I used a poison and it put a (im guessing here) condition of “poison” would my condition damage apply to every DoT(damage over time) poison “condition”?

Correct, and even if you get a damage bonus (like might for example) after you caused poison, the DoT currently in the target will get increased.

In GW2 there are some different types of conditions that cause damage, those are: bleed, poison, burning, confusion and torment.
The status condition damage increase the damage caused per “tick” of those conditions.

You can add multiple stacks of each condition, but some of them stack in intensity (bleed, confusion and torment) and others only in time (poison and burning), for example:
Bleed stack in intensity, so if 1 tick of bleed cause 100 damage, and you apply 5 stacks of bleed, you’ll cause 500 damage per tick.
Poison stack in time, so if you added a stack of poison for 5 seconds and then another stack of 3 seconds the target will be poisoned for 8 seconds.

There is also the stat condition duration it increase the time your conditions stay in the target, that way making easier to cause more dame with the intensity stacking conditions.

Now the bad part of condition damage in GW2 is that a target can only have 25 stacks of each condition globally, that mean if a party of 5 is attacking a boss and all the 5 members can cause 15 stacks of bleed, that would be 15*5=75 stacks but from those, 50 stacks will be simply discarded, so condition builds is only good when you are playing alone or when you are the only player in a group doing it.

I’m going to straighten this out for your convenience, as the majority of the above replies are entirely incorrect.

First off, there are a few conditions that stack in intensity. These conditions have a stronger effect based on the amount of times the condition is applied (stacks). These include Bleeding, Confusion, Torment, and Vulnerability. They have a maximum range of 25 stacks, meaning, the higher amount of stacks, the more damage will be done. Bleeding and Torment do damage-over-time and scale based on your Condition Damage stat. Confusion does damage based on your Condition Damage stat, but is only triggered when your enemy uses a skill. Vulnerability is linked to Direct Damage and adds 1% extra Physical Damage up to the maximum of 25% increased Direct damage.

All other conditions stack in duration with a maximum of 5 stacks. Of these, only Poison and Burning actually do damage which is based on your Condition Damage stat. All other ‘duration conditions’ have their own effects and do NO damage. Most of these are defensive/control conditions such as, Blind, Weakness, Chill, Cripple, etc.

Conditions are applied on a ‘first in, first out’ basis, meaning the newest applied condition (of any kind) will replace the oldest condition of that type provided the maximum stack has already been applied.