Guild Wars 2

I do not understand the role of condition damage fully. In most other games, DoTs suck at burst, but beat any other type of damage on the long run. However, it isn’t so in this game. Stacking a dozen bleeds on someone in a condition build takes longer and deals less damage than just plinking him with a bow or gun in a power build, regardless of the time span used to calculate this. Not only that, but conditions can be cleansed, and some classes even do it with ease. When looking at just the damage done, I don’t see a point, honestly. 25 stacks of bleed on someone is ~2925 damage per second, and most power builds, even ranged ones, can reach that number quite easily. Am I missing something here?
Note that I’m only talking about condition damage here, not all the conditions in the game.

There are a variety of uses. Conditions aren’t mitigated by toughness, for one, so those classes who stack toughness but run base vit are more susceptible to condition builds. Conditions also allow for more flexibility in combat, and by default can increase survivability by allowing you to disengage. They also have the advantage of making boss steals or securing bosses on Niflhel that much simpler.

On my Thief I can solo the lord on Foefire with all NPCs up, and even with 1-2 defenders at times simply because I can stack my bleeds, then disengage and focus on surviving. For a direct damage build you have to be on-target to do meaningful damage, so it’s less likely you’d be able to pull this off. This is a significant advantage on that map as I can cap the first point, rush the door, and take out the lord solo before anyone comes to defend. If I die in the process, it’s not a big deal. I can focus on defending and backcapping once I get that 150 point advantage making base-races less of a reality, and forcing the enemy on the defensive right off the bat.

If a player is bringing condition removal, he isn’t bringing something else. Just because it counters -my- build doesn’t mean he counters the 100B warrior next to me. Bringing condition removal to a game is important, but it leaves you vulnerable to other builds. Variety is important, too.

Many burst builds are also reliant on specific cooldowns to some degree. 100B warriors can be effective without quickness, but with it up they are far more likely to win. Without it, 100B becomes significantly easier to dodge away from with a stunbreak. Same goes for Pistol Whip thieves. Most condition builds are not reliant on CDs to get their damage out at all meaning they are a real threat at any given time. If a warrior or thief doesn’t have their quickness up, they are typically pretty laughable if you bring stun-breaks or stability.

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They also have the advantage of making boss steals or securing bosses on Niflhel that much simpler.

Conditions are steady, constant, predictible damage. They completely lack burst. For these reasons, they make stealing an enemy boss difficult, and they make securing your boss hard. I fail to see how it’s the other way around.

On my Thief I can solo the lord on Foefire with all NPCs up, and even with 1-2 defenders at times simply because I can stack my bleeds, then disengage and focus on surviving. For a direct damage build you have to be on-target to do meaningful damage, so it’s less likely you’d be able to pull this off.

If you’re autoattacking to apply bleeds that tick for 117 damage every second for ten seconds, your autoattack is basically 1170 damage + the 200-400 or whatever you get from the attack power itself. Are you honestly telling me that you, as a thief, have less than 1.3k DPS?

If a player is bringing condition removal, he isn’t bringing something else. Just because it counters -my- build doesn’t mean he counters the 100B warrior next to me. Bringing condition removal to a game is important, but it leaves you vulnerable to other builds. Variety is important, too.

But bringing it is not the issue, and some classes like thieves, guardians and necromancers always have some. The issue is that condition damage is countered by more things, and the nature of condition damage (slow to build, steady, no big spike) affords the target the longest time possible to decide how to react.

Many burst builds are also reliant on specific cooldowns to some degree. 100B warriors can be effective without quickness, but with it up they are far more likely to win. Without it, 100B becomes significantly easier to dodge away from with a stunbreak. Same goes for Pistol Whip thieves. Most condition builds are not reliant on CDs to get their damage out at all meaning they are a real threat at any given time. If a warrior or thief doesn’t have their quickness up, they are typically pretty laughable if you bring stun-breaks or stability.

Tried Ranger, Engineer and Necro condition builds in PVP, and I had to use utility skills to make sure my conditions build fast, stick, and actually debilitate an enemy. Sure, you can apply conditions with just autoattacks. Does that actually matter? Nope. Same way power damage doesn’t matter with just autoattacks.

Burst doesn’t generally happen in one damage spike, it’s usually multiple strikes in quick succession. That’s what makes boss stealing easier, if you have multiple bleeds stacks, you’re getting multiple 100+ damage ticks every second increasing your likelihood of stealing the boss. Sure, if the enemy thief backstabs the boss when he reaches 1/4 HP, he’ll more than likely secure it, but there are few builds that can produce heavy hits in quick succession, so applying more hits towards the end will increase your probability of getting the final hit.

Straight numbers aren’t always beneficial to look at in PvP, and I don’t auto-attack, I use Death Blossom. Let’s say I am hitting 1.3k DPS only, I’m also evading 6 times in a row before weapon swap and u-skills even come into the equation, while stacking 9 bleeds from DB, and however many from caltrops on the ground. There are far more variables to consider than just damage.

I can’t speak for Necros or Guardians, but for Thieves I can. We lack meaningful condition removal aside from Shadowstep, in reality. Shadowstep only removes 3, so I don’t see a valid point here. Most Thieves will agree that condition damage is an effective way to fight them. Rangers also have poor condition removal. Signet of Renewal relies on the pet being alive, and in range, and it’s currently bugged and doesn’t always work if both of those conditions are true. Aside from that, they can get bear for Shake It Off! (unreliable at best), and Healing Spring to remove 2 (I believe, and it’s on a long CD). Not everyone takes meaningful condition removal, and even if they do it’s easy enough to re-stack it, and they don’t generally take more than 1 u-skill for it anyway.

I, personally, find both my condition built Ranger and Thief to be excellent characters. If you disagree, it’s most likely because it just isn’t your playstyle. And while burst builds offer less time to react for the target, the game is generally designed around disallowing long-duration sustainability. This allows condition damage to be a viable damage type in any situation. Availability of condition removal tends to be less than the availability of condition stacking skills.

If you want to argue about condition damage vs. burst damage in a vacuum, you’ll probably win the argument. Burst will beat out sustained, long-term DPS in a vacuum. When you bring evasion, stealth, disengagement tools, and flexibility into the argument it all changes, though.

As a guardian, I ONLY go down to conditions quickly, and I can only take other people down quickly with a burn condition spec.

But if you’re running a condition build, you need to be mobile, because you will always give up a lot of survivability to get maximum condition duration and damage.

Point of condition damage is to make things hectic. With a teamfight mid and everyone as condition spec you can easily spread 25 stacks of bleeds/burning to all players. You’re not sitting there doing your thing while taking no damage. Everyone is dying.

People are getting better at countering burst and using KD’s/stuns/dodges to stop the majority of the incoming damage.

But the real advantage to a condition team is that you prevent res’s, because while you wipe all conditions when going down, you don’t wipe them when getting up. Getting res’ed with 5k hp and having 25 stacks of bleeding on you just makes you die instantly. You can res people who get bursted down. Resing people against a condition team is a waste of time.

for pvp? it counters thieves pretty well, we have very few ways to remove conditions and they stilla ffect us while we are in stealth (where we are trying to avoid damage)