Guild Wars 2

I’d like to talk about condition damage a bit, and a few things that I’ve tried to test and wanted sanity checks on. Other things are just stuff that I think people may or may not know. I’ll probably go through all the tunes that affect conditions tonight and post ‘em up, and make sure I have all the condition damage stat combinations on gear. Feel free to point out anything I’m missing, and especially point out anything I’ve mentioned that is wrong!

1. The only thing that affects damage from conditions is condition damage, my specific test/ramification from this is the 5% extra damage to bleeding opponents and the 5% bonus damage sigil do not seem to affect the damage from conditions. I also don’t believe vulnerability affects it either.

2A. Duration seems to do nothing unless it actually gives a full second increase. This one was less well tested, as we don’t have damage meters yet to my knowledge(I may go test this more thoroughly tonight unless someone else already has). Increasing the bleed duration of my pistol shot to 2 and 3/4 of a second did not seem to yield any bigger or smaller ticks(I would asusme if it did anything you’d either get a tick, and then 1 and 3/4 of a tick of damage, or 2 1 ticks, and then 3/4 tick). The important thing here is that you want to make sure all your moves are exactly on the second marks or else the condition duration is worthless(this is true only for poison/burn/bleed). This is very bad for our pistol skill 1 bleed as you need a full 50% increase in bleed duration to get it to another second.

2B. Sometimes it may be more effecient to build duration though, especially the higher the base/lower the scaling/higher the base duration. IE for a burn of 5 seconds assuming you have 0 condition damage, a 20% duration increase will give it 328 more damage, you’d need a lot of condition damage to get that much(262 to be exact).

3. Sigils stack oddly for the %chance on crit, this is mainly important for %chance for bleed on crit. Both are counted in, but cannot both proc on a single attack, so it simply raises the chance that you’ll see a single proc

4. condition damage ignores armor/toughness, nothing that I’ve seen mitigates the ticks other than condition removal and condition duration reduction.

5. Probably better known, condition damage is unnafected by crit chance/damage.

6. Make sure to check the dungeon vendors for condition damage gear. crafting will only net you power/vit/con damage and power/precision/con damage. Dungeon gear has the (in my opinion) mighty Precision/Toughness/ConDamage. I’ll edit this later with all the con damage gear options.

7. Gems of the undead in armor let you convert toughness into condition damage, and a trait in the vit/healing line lets you turn vitality into condition damage.

8. The explosion from the pistol does not, to my knowledge, apply bleed, nor is it an explosion so the % chance for explosions to bleed does nothing for it.

9. Might gives bonus to power and condition damage stat

10. damage ratios!

Burn: 4.1 * Level + 0.25 * Condition Damage per second
Poison : Level + 0.1 * Condition Damage per second
Bleed: 2.5 + (0.5 * Level) + (0.05 * Condition Damage)= per stack per second
Confusion: 25 + 0.5 * Level + 0.075 * Condition Damage per stack per skill use

at 80:

Burn: 328 + 0.25 * Condition Damage per second
Poison : 80 + 0.1 * Condition Damage per second
Bleed: 42.5 + (0.05 * Condition Damage) per stack per second
Confusion: 25 +40 + 0.075 * Condition Damage per stack per skill use

important parts for condition damage stat.

Burn = +1dps per 4 Con damage.
Poison = +1dps per 10 Con Damage
Bleed = +1dps per 20 con damage
Confusion = +1 dps per 13.33333333333

Good info, man. Keep it up. I am very curious to know how to maximize the effectiveness of condition damage builds. .

Hmm… my sigil of fire that is on my shield will proc with my pistol.

Thanks for testing all this, why cant devs ever just tell us how this stuff works?

interesting on the sigil of fire, I’ll test that again tonight, I did it stupidly last time and had 60% chance ot bleed on pistol and shield, and 30% on the mastery. I’ll just be traitless with the sigil only on the shield. It’s also not imposisble that the bleed chance just doesn’t stack, so two 60% chance to bleeds don’ot work together.

If conditions don’t crit, why would I want precision in the first place? And don’t say it’s just for that 1-2 trait that gives you a % chance on crit to get a little extra effect.

because for one the trait that gives precision also gives condition damage, then most stats have precision as a primary stat with condition damage on top of that. then dont ignore the fact that a high crit nets you more damage on your attacks.

The problem is there’s only a few choices for condition damage primary items. I like precision because your choices are essentially precision and power, and there’s no way to convert power to condition damage. If you run everything the has those chance on crits, you’ll have a 100% chance for the crappy 2 second built in bleed, a 60% chance for a superior 3 second bleed, 30% chance for an awesome 5 second bleed, and 33% chance for a 2 second burn(burn is crazy strong). Even with just 50% crit chance you are basically applying a much better bleed or a burn every other attack, and getting multiple of those procs on a single crit is not at all uncommon.

edit: My personal build goes solidly into the toughness and vitality trees, and uses the rune of the undead and vit tree trait to convert a bit of my defense into offense. Then I use as much condition on crit as I can, and build precision/toughness/con damage gear.

ERr also I had those reversed the 60% is the awesome 5 second bleed, 30% is the 3 second one.

Has anyone else noticed condition duration display bugs and/or condition duration not working properly?

Care to elaborate? Condition duration is one of the things I understand the least, as it’s pretty hard to test. I basically just threw it out since it doesn’t seem to do squat for our base bleed without a crap ton of it.

XelNigma.6315:

Hmm… my sigil of fire that is on my shield will proc with my pistol.

Thanks for testing all this, why cant devs ever just tell us how this stuff works?

Yeah, I can certainly confirm this. I was surprised to see it happen after I equipped it, so I went to the mist and tested it to make certain I knew it wasthe case, and it is.

Slight update on that. Off hand rune defintiely works for the main hand, BUT two 60% bleed chances NEVER stacks two bleeds from one attack. I’m not sure if an extra sigil does nothing, or you get two seperate 60%‘s that don’t stack.

The sigils work together. You have two chances 60% each to get the proc. However, even if both chances succeed, you will only get a single proc.
So dual sigils increase the chance for the effect at diminishing returns.

Also: vulnerability should affect conditions.

And regarding point 4: condition duration reduction exists as a stat for mitigating condition damage. It is found on runes and food.

Thanks for the catches! I wasn’t sure on vulnerability since % raising damage doesn’t work at all. I’ll test that for reals whenever I can get home.

% damage traits don’t work, that is correct. Also note that might increases condition damage as well.

Ah yes, probably a good thing to mention. I’ll toss up the condition damage to actual damage ratios too.

Yep, always nice to add that. Instead of writing the level ratios though, it would be nice if you would just write the direct level 80 values, as build discussion is mostly relevant for sPvP and high level PvE anyway.

Sure. Also my friend just tested vulnerability for me, he stacked 12 vulnerabilites and his bleeds ticked the same.

Hmm… that’s a bummer. Dunno if it has been changed? There is so much unclear about all the stuff and they’re constantly switching it around. I really wish we had some reliable information.

Yeah, it’s pretty weird. Mesmer clones are similar in that % damage increases and weapon damage don’t affect them. IMO the % damage increase/vulnerability are just kinda borked for anything that’s not a straight up damage.

It’s there any good weapon/armor options besides the TA set for Precision/Toughness/ConDamage gear?

Does the proc on sigil of fire apply burn?

2. Duration seems to do nothing unless it actually gives a full second increase. This one was less well tested, as we don’t have damage meters yet to my knowledge(I may go test this more thoroughly tonight unless someone else already has). Increasing the bleed duration of my pistol shot to 2 and 3/4 of a second did not seem to yield any bigger or smaller ticks(I would asusme if it did anything you’d either get a tick, and then 1 and 3/4 of a tick of damage, or 2 1 ticks, and then 3/4 tick). The important thing here is that you want to make sure all your moves are exactly on the second marks or else the condition duration is worthless(this is true only for poison/burn/bleed). This is very bad for our pistol 1’s bleed as you need a full 50% increase in bleed duration to get it to another second.

If this is true then this would be rather bad. Let’s hope not.

1. yes, only full seconds do damage but it might be still worth to have a bit of a bonus to condition duration because your target might have condition duration reduction.

also remember that it is more efficient to get condition duration instead of more condition damage at some point, especially for incendiary powder.

2. sigils dont stack “oddly” as you say it. some sigils share the cooldown. having 2 sigils of the same type with internal cooldown means that only 1 will go off. I have tested this extensively and found out that some sigils (some not even of the same type) share the cooldown. the best would be to use one that is passive in the second weapon slot.

CptCosmic.3156:

1. yes, only full seconds do damage but it might be still worth to have a bit of a bonus to condition duration because your target might have condition duration reduction.

also remember that it is more efficient to get condition duration instead of more condition damage at some point, especially for incendiary powder.

2. sigils dont stack “oddly” as you say it. some sigils share the cooldown. having 2 sigils of the same type with internal cooldown means that only 1 will go off. I have tested this extensively and found out that some sigils (some not even of the same type) share the cooldown. the best would be to use one that is passive in the second weapon slot.

i had wondered about the duration thing.
But then its confirmed duration is awful for damage. Duration is good for status effects.
(Though, it should be noted, -duration runes/food then is pretty powerful. As -10% off a 2s bleed, will CRIPPLE it. reducing its damage by 50% presumably.)

I would be inclined to say, HEY ARENANET, giant design flaw.

Blowtorch and venom shot have 100% uptimes with 20% cdr trait already. +duration on either is kindof pointless then. Granted if application is not steady, a 12s burn gains another full hit from even 10%.
Bleeds then only really benefit from +duration. But with 2s, and 3s durations on p/p, you need a significant amount of +duration to get any actual damage increase. 50%, and 33% respectively.

Don’t forget confusion as a cond damage.

Tolore.6138:

The important thing here is that you want to make sure all your moves are exactly on the second marks or else the condition duration is worthless(this is true only for poison/burn/bleed). This is very bad for our pistol 1’s bleed as you need a full 50% increase in bleed duration to get it to another second.

Unless I’m missing something in the mechanics, mathematically you’d need a 100% duration increase to get a bleed of 1 second to last for 2 seconds. 50% increase applied to a base 1 second comes out to 1.5 seconds.

solid points, do we know what an easily achievable condition reduction is, it may be worth to be(ah with food and runes you can easily achieve X so it might be worth X duration increase to counteract that).

I’ll add in confusion.

The fire explosion on crit skill does not apply burn.

edit: I believe the only ways to get precision/toughness/condamage gear is from dungeons, or buying exotics of the AH(or wherrver they come from, probably drops).

Gurt.9368:

Tolore.6138:

The important thing here is that you want to make sure all your moves are exactly on the second marks or else the condition duration is worthless(this is true only for poison/burn/bleed). This is very bad for our pistol 1’s bleed as you need a full 50% increase in bleed duration to get it to another second.

Unless I’m missing something in the mechanics, mathematically you’d need a 100% duration increase to get a bleed of 1 second to last for 2 seconds. 50% increase applied to a base 1 second comes out to 1.5 seconds.

he meant 1 ability, not one second. it is a 2 second bleed.

I edited that little blurb for clarity now.

Added 2b to describe where duration WOULD be good.

“Blowtorch and venom shot have 100% uptimes with 20% cdr trait already. +duration on either is kindof pointless then. Granted if application is not steady, a 12s burn gains another full hit from even 10%.”

an interesting statistic I actually use pistol/shield and don’t take the 20% CDR on pistol(I got 10 explosives, 10 fire arms, 20 inventions, 30 alchemy), so it may actually be worth it to grab a poison duration sigil. Dual pistols should almost certainly be at least 20 fire arms and have that talent though.

edit: err looking at both skills, th epoison is already perma if you land all 5 bullets, and the flame thrower is 6 seconds of burn on a 15 second cool down and only i fyou’re close.

Poison is close but not quite 100% without.
10s cd. 2 second cast time/duration. CD starts at the end of cast. Which will only have 8s of duration. so its CD is effectively 12s, with 10s of coverage.

Both honestly, have issues with applying full durations, so yeah. in that context, may have been a disingenuous statement. A target can run out of range, and thus making reapplying that 12s burn consistently not viable, and thus +duration does have value.

Point of reference, I don’t think hair trigger effects pistol 1. More/better tests needed. but I think I got 23 shots in 20s with and without.

yeah I’m almost certain hair trigger DOESN’T effects pistol 1, pretty sute only quickness buff does, a solid call I didn’t think about the cast time on the poison!

edit: sorry mispoke the first time, pretty sure it does NOT

yeah. tested again.
Pistol 1 and rifle 1. Both give me 23 shots in 20s, with or without hair trigger
(I had thought P1 might have been faster then Rifle 1. but nope, same attack speed)

So this is going from the game ui only. Its untested.

This is from stacking condition/burn duration as follows ; First 30% traits, then (40%) 1xburn weapon, (50%) 2x burn weapon, (60%) 2pc Lyssa bonus , (75%) 2pc Baelfire bonus, 90% 2pc Legion.

Rocket Kick
0% Duration – 5 seconds
10% Duration – 5.5 seconds
20% Duration – 6 seconds
30% Duration – 6.5 seconds
40% Duration – 6.5 seconds
50% Duration – 6.5 seconds
60% Duration – 6.5 seconds
75% Duration – 6.5 seconds
90% Duration – 6.5 seconds

Blowtorch
0% Duration -2 seconds
10% Duration – 2.25 seconds
20% Duration – 2.5 seconds
30% Duration – 2.5 seconds
40% Duration – 2.5 seconds
50% Duration – 2.5 seconds
60% Duration – 2.5 seconds
75% Duration – 2.5 seconds
90% Duration – 2.5 seconds

Incediary Ammo
0% Duration – 3 seconds
10% Duration – 3.25 seconds
20% Duration – 3.5 seconds
30% Duration – 4 seconds
40% Duration – 4 seconds
50% Duration – 4 seconds
60% Duration – 4 seconds
75% Duration – 4 seconds
90% Duration – 4 seconds

So im guessing this is down to either identical buffs arent stacking, ui display errors, only being able to add 1 additional tick, or i cant read.

Interesting though……

oooohhh wow good find Visionary. I’ll test that tonight to see if the number match up with the ui, unless someone else can test before then.

edit: actually thinking on it, my mesmer friend ran into the same thing with cooldown and it was UI only, still warrents testing on our end though.

You have to sacrifice alot for +condition duration and or +specific condition duration. If it turns out that the ui is correct, then surely it means if you are going for a burn spec engineer. Your looking at ;

Rocket Kick – +20% Duration
Incendiary Ammo – 30% Duration
Incendiary Powder – 50% Duration.

Anything else would be kinda useless.

There must be an error here somewhere.

Wait.

How about only condition duration from traits is added onto the UI?

Extremely likely now i think about it, no duration increase was shown above 30%.

didnt check burns. but bleeds, I had 2 agony’s in pistols, and 30% from explosions traits.
And that did give me a 3s bleed on p1.

Did it show in the UI?

yes. bleed duration was shown properly on the UI. in quarter second varibles.

Napalm specialist. +20% burn duration.
Blowtorch shows 2s duration still. Napalm spec is not showing in the UI. But is actually effecting the burns duration.
On target. lasts 6.6s.

+10% trait. shows 2 1/4.
lasts 7.4. (should be 7.8? with napalm.)
+20% trait. shows 2 1/2.
lasts 7.9 (should be 8.4 with naplam)
+30% trait. shows 2 1/2
lasts 8.7 (should be 9) Hmm, this one should be easy to check. see if my timing on the stopwatch was wrong. if it ticks 9 full times or not.
Ok, Tested, it did tick 9 times.

20% traited is 6.6 as well.

If it were adding separately, they would be lasting longer.
2s burn+20%=2.2s, then +20%=2.64s
So, its not that. its going the other way. lasting shorter then it should.

So if it was ticking 9 times. But the icon was only up 8.7s. Then it could be the animation for the icon showing up, takes a moment to appear.

So my blowtorch is definitely not updating with all of that, but it is working correctly. I have 95% duration, which should nearly doubl(almost 4 seconds per burn from 2). It lists 2 and a half, but when I do the point blank burn it nearly gives 12, so that seems to be working as intended, just not displaying.

Visionary.5681:

You have to sacrifice alot for +condition duration and or +specific condition duration. If it turns out that the ui is correct, then surely it means if you are going for a burn spec engineer.

1. actually it is pretty easy to get both +50% bleed and +50% burn duration
2. after some point it is way more efficient than getting more condition damage

2x krait, 2x afflicted, 2x lyssa runes, napalm specialist, 10 points in explosive tree, 1 sigil of smoldering

thus you have
bleed: 10% from explosive tree + 15% krait + 15% afflicted + 10% lyssa => +50%
burn: 10% from explosive tree + 20% napalm specialist + 10% lyssa + 10% sigil of smoldering => +50%

So with all tht being said to maximize ur condition damage should u it with +50 bleed dur and +50 burn dur as posted above ? Or would napalm specialist be better to be swapped with hair trigger to lower cd On p4 skill for more freq cast ?

Assuming your running some variation on a p/p build and assuming you have 1 additional burn from either ft or rb.

The question is, does the additional tick of bleed and burn create more damage than the lost +condition damage.

I also think that maybe a +burn focused build going to +50burn duration might be better maybe. Condition duration seems only worthwhile upto being able to sustain a permaburn, whereas our bleed damage is so low with the current state of pistol#1.

I guess if your going Elixir U then maybe you can stack alot of bleeds, but without i can stack maybe 4 bleeds on my own.

Thoughts?

I posted a little blurb on duration effectiveness, it’s pretty easy to calculate. A Bleed example

LostCon = amount of condition damage you are sacrificing for the duration increase
NewCon=Condition damage without the amount of condition damage you lost

Floor(whatever) means cut the decimal off the thing in the parenthesis(IE 2.9 becomes 2)

Total lost damage of a move= (LostCon/20)* total applied burn duration or

Total damage gained = Floor(Seconds gained from duration)(42.5 + 0.05NewConditionDamage)

Just compare the two and see which is higher!

I know this thread is fairly old, but a lingering question went unanswered. Is it worthwhile to get your condition duration up to the 50% needed to get an extra tick from our 2 second conditions?

I went ahead and did the calculations to determine if using the runes/traits that CptCosmic listed is worthwile:
"
2x krait, 2x afflicted, 2x lyssa runes, napalm specialist, 10 points in explosive tree, 1 sigil of smoldering
"
to obtain +50% duration for both bleeds and burns, thus changing our basic bleed from 2s to 3s, and the burn on crit from 2s to 3s.

These are done using maxed out Condition Damage in PvE, something we should be striving for in such a build.

Highest Base Condition Damage:
+ 315 (armor)
+ 300 (traits)
+ 90 (pistol 1)
+ 90 (pistol 2)
+ 112 (accessories) + 50 (jewels)
+ 90 (amulet) + 25 (jewel)
+ 134 (rings) + 50 (jewels)
TOTAL: 1256

Maxed Condition Damage from Runes (with any +con 5/6 + 1/6):
+ 183 (first rune five times)
+ 28 (second rune once)
TOTAL: 1467

Burn: 328 + (0.25 * 1467) = 694.75 DPS
Lowest Burn duration: 2 seconds
Total damage from burn: 1389.5

Bleed: 42.5 + (0.05 * 1467) = 115.85 DPS
Lowest Bleed duration: 2 seconds
Total damage from bleed: 231.7

Extra Condition Damage from Runes (with afflicted/krait/lyssa):
+ 28 (afflicted)
+ 28 (krait)
TOTAL: 1312

Burn: 328 + (0.25 * 1312) = 656 DPS
Lowest Burn duration (50% increase): 3 seconds
Total damage from burn: 1968

Bleed: 42.5 + (0.05 * 1312) = 108.1 DPS
Lowest Bleed duration (50% increase): 3 seconds
Total damage from bleed: 324.3

So for the burn, we jump from 1390 damage to 1968 damage;
And for the bleed, we jump from 232 damage to 324 damage.

Conclusion: YES, GETTING YOUR +DURATION UP TO AT LEAST 50% IS DEFINITELY WORTHWHILE (at least with maxed out PvE gear). Someone want to go ahead and do it with PvP gear?

The pistol #1 skill, explosive shot, gives 2 seconds of bleed. So if you increase your bleed duration by say 25%, it increases it to 2.5 seconds. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, nor should you necessarily aim to get it at an even second mark. If you shoot something once with explosive shot and then dont do anything after that, you will do no damage with that extra half second of bleed. If you shoot them twice though, you apply 5 seconds of bleed instead of 4 seconds you would apply without the duration increase. As long as you apply more bleed before it ends you shouldn’t worry about this too much.

With the burn on crit this may be more of a problem since it might happen often that you only get a little burn and then none for a while, but I think it still wont matter if you have other sources of burn including teammates burning the same target as you. Not sure exactly if the last part about the teammates is true though, maybe warrents some testing. I think if two people apply burning the durations will just add together and the damage will be calculated from whomever has the higher condition damage.

edit: just realized i’m an idiot and bleeds dont stack in duration, so nvm that whole first paragraph. i’ll leave it there though since it still applies to burns and poison

I’ve only gone through the OP, but not all the replies here, so I’m not sure if anyone has covered this:

Condition duration that stacks in DURATION (not intensity) – it is correct to say that it ticks by the full second. But remember that they stack in duration – meaning, even at 1.2 seconds, if I can get 5 stacks, I will get an extra tick at the end of the 5th tick. I haven’t personally tested this, but I’ve always believed this to be so.

Condition duration vs condition damage – whilst it may be correct that 20% increase in duration theoretically does more damage than 20% increase in condition damage, but remember that duration can easily go wasted into the background when the duration lasts longer than the mob’s health. I.e. if you can put up a consistent duration throughout the whole of the mob’s health, it is better to invest in damage instead of duration.