It’s very obvious that since the June 23, 2015 patch, damage is significantly higher. You can love it or hate it. This is just an analysis of the causes.
Stats from Traits Moved to Gear
The amount of stats gained from traits in the old system can be valued at 1050. Out of the 10 stats which used to be on traits, the profession specific trait is valued at half (half of it became baseline), and boon and condition are valued at 0 because they were effectively removed. Over an average trait distribution, that yields 75% of the 1400 possible stat points, or 1050.
When you add together the base stat increase (926 to 1000 on 4 attributes) and the stat increase of a 3-stat PvP amulet, it’s 1064 stats. You can debate that number (i.e. the +74 base precision doesn’t count since crit chance is the same), but the number doesn’t vary too much.
However, an important point to consider is how the stats on traits were distributed to various attributes in the old system vs. the new system. In the old system, you could rarely pick up powerful stats (more return per point) like power without picking up lesser ones like healing. In the new system, you can avoid a lot of less powerful stats. Using the best-case distributions in the old system (6 in traits with ferocity), this typically yielded only 1000 stat points into powerful stats and the remaining 400 either lost (boon or condi duration which are gone) or in less desirable stats. If we say less powerful stats are 75% of the value of the powerful ones, then there is an effective 100 stats points, minimum, which have been gained in the new system.
Trait Overhaul
You can now choose what is effectively 18 trait points of the old system when before you could only choose 14, a gain of 4. The additions vary between professions, but in general, the additional traits will lean toward increased damage, especially when going with an offensive build.
In addition to being able to effectively select more traits, many old traits were combined or made baseline. This further increases the trait yield when compared to the old system. For example, power well necromancers could be viewed as gaining 6 trait points because they no longer need to spend 2 points for Focused Rituals.
The increased damage potential gained from additional and combined traits can be quantified at between 15 and 25% for offensive builds. Using 100 power as roughly a 5% damage increase, this change can be viewed as 300-500 stat points.
Types of Traits
In addition to the damage increases from traits, it’s worth looking into the types of traits added. In many cases, proc-based traits were added, with most builds gaining at least one. Most of these proc-based traits provide a chunk of damage which is either hard to predict (especially the first time fighting someone), realistically impossible to avoid, or both.
These are on top of existing sigils, runes, and traits which have these properties. Further, increased power values are also increasing the damage of many of these procs. The result is that damage bursts are larger and the increases are largely unavoidable – you can only delay them.
Condition Damage Changes
In general, you need multiple stacks of the new conditions to equal one stack of the old, even at higher condition damage numbers. Comparing old to new with some rounding, Bleeding is about 1:2 at 0 condi damage and almost 1:1 at around 1200. Poison is approximately 1:3 at 0 and around 1:2 at 1200, but has low damage overall. Burning has similar scaling to Poison, but the damage is higher than even Bleeding.
The big increases are clearly coming from burning. At 1200 condi damage, it’s dealing 317.5 damage per tick (old was 628).; if you apply 2 or more stacks, you’re doing more damage than in the old system. At 0 condition damage, 3 stacks eclipses the old burning. This seems okay until you consider that burning also gets applied in small quantities from various sources e.g. guardian attacks, finishers in fire fields, fire shield, burning procs from traits, etc. In the old system, all these short burning applications would just extend existing burning stacks and were typically lost. The overlap of these small sources is like having 2 or more of the old burning stacks ticking at once.
Summary
Condensing what is above:
- Total stats are about the same before and after, but in the new system, there is an effective increase of an additional 400-600 points from more favorable stat distribution and added/combined traits.
- Previously Burning was the steady damage condition, with Bleeding (and Torment and Confusion) allowing for burst. Now Burning is also capable of burst, but its numbers would imply that ANet is trying to maintain the feel of steady damage.
- Damage bursts have further increased due to an increase in the number of proc-based damage abilities.