Guild Wars 2

Deciding on my lvl 80 dungeon armor. And im questioning how much condition dmg is bringing to the table in terms of dps as opposed to crit dmg.

My final armor is a choice between Power/Prec/Crit Dmg or Power/Prec/Condition dmg.

Im a level 80 guardian, and i know burn is important. But burn duration is one thing and burn dmg (condition dmg) is another.

- IGN: Tzenjin / Server: Ehmry Bay

We have on form of Condition damage (Burn) that does not stack. While it is useful and always a plus, Condition Damage as a stat is not something you should be looking to really max out.

I tend to not pay much attention to condition damage really. I let my traits and the occasional piece of free armor handle the condition damage. Otherwise, I generally go for power/prec/tough(or crit damage).

Keep in mind, condition doesn’t do anything to objects which sucks when you have to smash something down. I find crit’ing well over 50% of the time is more reliable.

@Marthiarn oh god I wish it stacked xD Could set someone on fire for a good minute straight.

Edit: Oh, and if you DO decide to go all out with condition, make sure you have the Reaper of Greneth skill. Only works if you’re human, of course. Adds some nice condition damage to your list so you aren’t just stuck with burn.

Personally, I think the Power/Precision/C.Damage set is for professions that add Conditions on critical strikes. Plus, Guardian really only has a burn…which doesn’t stack.

I personally use Knight’s (toughness, power, precision) on my armor with the Toughness to Precision trait and Beserker’s on my weapons which is Critical Damage. I also run with 30 points in the trait line that boosts Critical Damage.

While burning is nice, it didn’t feel worth it to spec for condition damage when it’s really all we get.

I personally run a power/precision/condition damage setup and I find it to be quite nice. With my group, I’m constantly hovering between 15 and 25 stacks of might, and my burning ticks for 650~770+/tick. I will probably be able to peak out at around 800/tick burnings once I finish my accessories. Also, depending on your power (my Superior Sigil of the Air non-crits for about 1100) and your precision (for proc rate), the bleed on crit sigil (Superior Sigil of the Earth) would provide a 132/tick bleed per stack. At 132.65/tick for 5 ticks, the sigil provides 663.25 dmg over 5 seconds at twice the proc rate as SSotA.

The issue with bleeds, however, is that most groups can almost always maintain a near infinite 25 stack of bleeds without your help. If you’re running in a group that has minimal condition damage specs, this sigil with high condition damage would outshine any Sigil aside a 10% vs. specific race sigil. But I’m pretty sure most people aren’t going to be min/maxing to the point of having a weapon for each instance they run.

Burns do stack, btw, they just stack in duration, which allows you the assurance that the mob will be burning til they die. And with the trait that gives 10% increased damage to burning targets, that’s a good thing.

Rampager’s gear (Power/Precision/Cond. Dmg.) also provides more precision than Berserker’s gear (Power/Precision/Crit Dmg.) per piece (101 vs. 72 on the level 80 exotic chests, as an example). With lower crit, the relative value of crit damage is reduced and the relative value of the on-proc condition effect sigils are increased.

Now, this isn’t to say that going for a Power/Crit/Crit Damage setup is wrong or bad; however, ruling out condition damage is a mistake.

All said and done, when I finish my exotic accessories, I’ll be sitting at 2001 Power, 2164 Precision (~64% crit, I think?) and 1002 condition damage before might and signets. And I’m happy with this. Especially with 40% longer burning between trait lines and runes.