Guild Wars 2

Hello,

I play a Warrior with Longbow and Sword/Mace.
Yes, I know Greatsword is the “mac-daddy damage dealer”…but, I love using a bow and especially prefer the way the sword/ shield or sword/ mace look and feel when playing.

With this in mind, I have been trying to find the strongest “burn” damage build possible.

I actually utilize multiple conditions, but burning is my favorite because, I love seeing the flaming AoE’s and flaming arrows…

Most of the articles and postings seem to indicate that conditions and burning in particular are “bugged” in many ways.

Questions.

1.
Where can I go to practice/ experiment with my damage & rotations?
(open world/ not heart of the mists Golems)? I go to the target dummies near the dungeon token vendors in Lion’s Arch, but they do not show the conditions. Is there another place, so I can actually see my conditions as they are applied?

2.
It seems that condition duration and burning duration are different and do not stack. (i.e. +40% condition duration food and + 15% burning duration runes do not stack because they are different).

3. Regardless of how much condition duration or burning duration I have, my longbow F1 still “ticks” five times over five seconds. I have tried multiple different combinations (runes + sigils + food + traits).

4. Supposedly, burning duration is rounded to the nearest 1/4 second, but the damage is applied only at the full 1 second? Meaning that any + duration you have that does not get you to the full second mark is wasted.

5. Longbow (mouse-over) tool-tip is irrelevant and meaningless to the actual burning duration applied?

6. In heart of the mists (practice Golems) burning condition seems to apply and then continuously reset or reapply the duration multiple times (but for various duration amounts). This resetting of duration seems to be not related to the amount of burning duration/ condition duration I have on my character?

7. It seems that for now, the best (only feasible) way to maximize burning damage is to forget about duration and just max out the condition damage modifier (1000 +/- for optimal?)?

8. The pre-release notes for the upcoming patch (October 5th?) seem to indicate a new way of displaying the conditions and corrected (mouse over) tool-tips?

9. Is there a way to re-size the boon/ condition icons? I’d like to make them a little bit larger and easier to see, independent of other items on the screen.

Thank You,

1. Not really. There is really not testing outside of the mists for conditions. You can either fight things or test in wvw against players.
2. They definitely stack, but obviously +% burning duration only works on burning.
3. The F1 ability is an ability it is not effected by burning or condition duration but the burning applied every tick is effected.
4. That is correct damage is only done each full second so an extra half second is wasted.
5. I haven’t had this problem, though its important to note that that burning specified in the tooltip is for a single tick of f1 and a single arrow of your 2 skill so if the target takes multiple hits multiple burns will be applied.
6. Burning stacks with duration not intensity meaning if you have a 5 second burn on the target and then apply a 2 second burn it will add that 2 seconds to the 5 seconds and keep counting down. Burning damage per tick will always be the same if you keep the same condition damage stat. Condition Duration has no effect on burning dps(damage per second) unless you are unable to keep burning on the target constantly with your current duration.
7. To continue where I left off 6. The and is yes and no. If you can keep the target burning continually with your current condition duration then adding more condition duration will have no effect on your burning damage. However adding condition damage will increase the damage of each tick allowing you to increase burning dps by continuing to add condition damage stats. So yes for burning damage once you can keep burning on the target forever there is no point adding more burning duration. This is not the case with bleed stacks though, they work differently.

8. Yes, i believe they are adding an option to change the way condition dmaage is displayed so that you have the option to change it so that rather than each stack popping a number of its own (so you see a bunch of smaller numbers) you ca make it show your entire condition damage for that second (one larger number). I am not positive thats the change but that is how I understood what I read about it.

9.Sadly no to my knowledge you cannot resize the boon duration/condition symbols without increasing the size of your entire interface.

One thing you should be aware, it is not a good idea to base your entire build around a single condition as that will greatly hinder you ability to do damage especially in a group.

Hope this helped.

1. As said, there are barely any usefull test areas. You need to visit heart of the mist golems for condition or crit testing
2. + 40% condition duration & + 15% burning duration = + 55% burning duration. Rembmer that it’s capped at + 100% and the tooltips might not display the real duration, especially the combo burning.
3. Longbow burst is a ground DoT, not a condition.
4. The game barely rounds anything. condition- and boon duration are rounded in the tooltips, but apply with “any” fractions.
   Fractions of conditions are a difficult case. Assuming you apply 2 stacks of burning without any “conditionless state”, 2x 3.5s burning = 7s burning = 7 ticks. So fractions may add up to full numbers. Additionally if there’re other tick-based effects on the target, a 3.5s burning may tick three times and may tick 4 times. So they are not lost either way.
5. Never fully trust tooltips. Read the wiki and test it yourself if necessary/ if you doubt them.
6. As explained above and in #4, burning stacks in duration. 3s burning + 4.2s burning + 1.5s burning = 8.7s burning. The white frame will be updated each new infliction.
7. If you manage to keep burning up at ~100% of the time, you don’t need to increase the duration (for burning at least). Then focus on condition damage.
   Additionally, if multiple sources cause burning (or other duration stacking conditions/ boons) on the same entity (target), the higher one ticks first. So if you party with someone with 100% burning uptime and with more condition damage than yourself, your burnings will never hurt the targets.
8. As I’ve understood, the floaters will be different any show their source (e.g. red fire numbers for burning). We’ll have to wait.
9. As said before, try to change your UI size if necessary.

Yes, very helpful.
Thank You.
..testing “burn duration” with the wrong skill (F1) = guaranteed wrong results.