Guild Wars 2

Hi, I’m a level 26 necro and I have a few skills that can really stack up vulnerability but when I read about the condition on the wiki it says that for every stack of vulnerability it increases the damage taken by the target by 1%. I can tell the vulnerability makes the target take more damage, but I cannot tell a difference in damage between 5 stacks of vuln and 25 stacks of vuln! Does vuln only increase physical damage? or am I calculating it wrong?

Vulnerability increases all damage done to a target by +1%, it seems.

You’re most likely calculating it wrong or not seeing much of a difference because you’re not high enough level. Once you hit level 80, you can really feel the difference.

hmmm…. I don’t know! I do know each stack of vulnerability will increase how much direct damage you take (25 stacks = 25% more damage). I don’t know if this also applies to conditions like bleed or burn.
I should know this, too. I have a skill that let me take less damage for each clone I have, so more clones could mean less damage taken from bleed, which would be fun to know.
5% vs. +25% isn’t a huge difference. if you’re dealing 200 damage normally, 5 stacks would mean 210 damage and 25 stacks would mean 250 damage.
I feel like it’s not actually 1 stack = +1% (unless that 1% compounds itself???). I always feel like I die in 2 hits when I have 20 stacks of vulnerability, whereas it takes 10 or so to kill me normally.
if that 1% does compound, then 25 stacks would mean the target takes 28.24% more damage. well, that’s not what’s going on! :P barely added anything to the 25%.

I think the general consensus is that in terms of comparison to damage caused by other forms of conditions, Vulnerability is not that desirable.

As stated, you probably wont’ notice it much at your level, but it might make a difference later on. Also to consider is the fact that yes, vulnerability only affects physical attacks, not conditions. As a necro, you probably have a few bleeds and poisons, but those won’t be affected by vuln.

Vulnerability affects all direct damage (it doesn’t matter what form it takes, there’s no elements or whatnot, all direct damage is the same), but does not affect condition damage.

Vulnerability is good for power builds if you can apply it quickly, and frequently.
There are many master traits that will increase your damage by 10% with a specific weapon and a sigil that increases damage by 5%.
So an extra 5-10% vulnerability is not negligible.

Also in group play, everyone benefits from vulnerability.

The con? When you need to switch targets quickly (eg pvp) then it loses it’s efficiency a lot as you have to re-apply it from scratch on each target.

it sucks how they will include things like vulnerability in condition builds, then make it not apply to conditions.
like how a lot of skills will have ‘proc to apply condition on crit’, so you have high crit to give all the conditions, but then conditions don’t benefit from crit, so those conditions are weak.
almost like they want you to diversify and just be meh in everything.