Guild Wars 2

I’m have a really hard time understanding how hard my abilities hit,specifically those with condition damage.
Let’s say Spike Trap,the tooltip says it will hit for bleeding (5s): 84damage but there is a ’’3’’ next to the bleed icon.
Does this mean the ability will hit for 252damage or not?

Also another trap I don’t understand is Viper’s Nest.
The tooltip says it will hit for ‘’poison per pulse (3s): 31 damage’’
and ‘’damage(x3): 27’’

Does this mean the poison will pulse 3 times for 31 damage?
And the damage of the trap will be 3 times 27?

It would be a great help to have these questions answered.

In the case of bleeding, the “3” indicates how many stacks of Bleed it is.

What really interests me is the damage.Does extra stacks mean extra damage?
So will my spike trap hit for 252 or 84?

Should be 84 per stack, so if it runs through then yes, if it’s cleansed at some point then no. I’m not sure exactly how the stacks work together with the duration myself, the wiki says each stack lasts 1 second, I would assume it should be 5s/3 duration for each stack.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Effect_stacking
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bleeding

Perhaps you can find something more specific in the Ranger forum. Your combat log should show the actual value?

The tooltips in this game are ridiculously confusing. Nor are they always consistent. It’s one of the most facepalm inducing problems in the game, as it would probably take a developer half a work day to standardize the whole gig. Anywho:

You can (almost) always treat the damage shown as the total damage dealt. For instance, if a skill says “Damage(x3): 33”, that means it hits 3 times for 11. Or 3 times for 9, 11, 13. Tooltips that don’t follow this rule are very rare.

As for condition damage, if the icon itself shows a number, such as the 3 next to your bleed icon, then the skill will apply 3 bleeds. The damage shown is still the total damage dealt.

What this means for you:

Your character’s bleed does roughly 5.5 damage per second, totaling 28 damage over 5 seconds. 3 applications of this 5 second bleed totals 84 damage over 5 seconds.

Your character’s Poison does roughly 10.3 damage per second. Each pulse of venom trap will apply a poison that does 31 damage over 3 seconds. We can presume that the trap pulses 3 times. Probably once per second over 3 seconds. Every time the trap pulses, whoever is in range takes 9 damage up front, and 31 poison damage over 3 seconds. If they stay in the trap for the full 3 pulses, then they will take 27 damage up front, and 93 poisons damage over 9 seconds.

Like I said, it’s ridiculous. But hopefully that helps.

this really really helped pinder,awesome answer thank you,I’m now less lost in guild wars

Looks like you’ve received an answer, but as an aside be aware that not all conditions stack the same – some stack by duration (i.e. more stacks = it lasts longer) and some stack by intensity (i.e. more stacks = more damage per second). There’s a page on the wiki about it if you want more info.