Guild Wars 2

Right now without buffs, active VoJ gives 5 hits of 328 damage each second with a single burn. We are all aware of how easily this is mitigated in PVP, along with other burning applications (JI and Purge) as well.

What would happen if these burning applications were changed so that instead of one burn for X seconds, they gave X burns 9stacked in duration of course) of 1 second each?

The con is that it would be much harder to get extra burning ticks from increased duration. It would also be detrimental to have any burning increase whatsoever (unless you got 100%) but the positive aspect, much harder to remove X burns as opposed to 1.

well if instead of every 1 in 5 attacks causing it, if every hit caused the 328 dmg burning effect it could work as you would be constantly reapplying it. Other than that idk what would work, as you wouldn’t be able to stack enough to be effective anyway.

Good initiative Obena, but I “think” condition removal clears a whole stack of that condition at the moment. Otherwise it would be impossible to get rid of 25 stacks of bleeding.

The innate problems with burning is that it is a single condition stacked in duration not intensity as opposed to say bleeding, which ticks very fast multiple times in smaller numbers.

Bleed works well for a few reasons. Multiple people can contribute to cause higher damage, versus multiple people apply burn just makes the burn last longer delaying the time it takes to reach full damage even more.

Burning is a slow condition for damage as it occurs in the 1’s of seconds. Long duration burning is only useful to apply a condition and/or burning so that we do more damage via traits Radiant Power and Fiery Wrath. So increased time in burning does nothing but maintain our secondary effects of damage though passive traits.

Increased intensity in burning does make it hit really hard, but that damage comes at such a slow pace it is easily not felt.

What if increased stacks in burning reduced duration?

So if I was going to do 1000 damage in burning in 3 seconds, applying burning again would cause me to do the same damage in 2 seconds. Although this would reduce the time we get damage modifiers from condition/burning effects.

Your idea would essentially change burning into another bleed stack style damage. I wonder why the devs didn’t have it like so in the first place.

Poison and chill are also conditions that stacks in duration and not intensity. The thing with that is that they cause secondary effects which benefit from having them on longer, such as reduced movement speed on the target and reduced healing effectiveness.

What secondary effect to burning could be applied to make its current mechanic more enticing? Maybe reduced outgoing damage by the target for as long as burning is applied? We are a defensive profession after all.

@CMF…I like this idea you have mate:)

What secondary effect to burning could be applied to make its current mechanic more enticing? Maybe reduced outgoing damage by the target for as long as burning is applied? We are a defensive profession after all.

/Salute

What if additional stacks of burning gave a condition equivalent of Defiant stacks that Boss mobs have. For example, if a Ranger and a Guardian chain 4 burns together, it’d require 4 instances of condition removal to remove the entire stack. When an “instance” of burn runs it’s duration then the stacks of Condition Defiance will retroactively change, but will not remove the condition as a result. For example, if I apply two 5-sec burns (total duration of 10 seconds) and the enemy uses a cleanse (reducing the defiant stack from 2 to 1) the entire condition won’t get removed after 5 seconds when the initial burn was applied, however, in the same instance if a cleanse wasn’t applied the stack would reduce from 2 to 1 when the duration ran up.

What would this accomplish?
-It would make multiple condition specs somewhat viable as stacking burning would be an improvement as opposed to a waste.

-It’d fit better with it’s design. Bleeds are meant to be short duration, but intense burst/DoTs (kind of an oxymoron); Burning is meant to be a consistent damage over a long period based on the stacked duration. The problem with burning is that a single condition removal will remove 20+ seconds of burning damage, so it’s really only viable against someone that is running no condition removal, or that has tons of conditions on them.

-With the exception of Fire Elementalist, most classes don’t have a lot of options for stacking burning damage and most of the options that are available I rarely see run. Do people actually run Torch Guardian/Mesmer/Ranger or Longbow Warrior? This would mean that most classes would have a rather difficult time abusing this by themselves. Guardians for example would be able to drop 4 stacks at most. At the very least it might add viability to running these weapons.

The draw back to this is Elementalist could potentially drop A LOT of burn stacks and abuse the hell out of this mechanic, but then again I’d say this isn’t that awful because unlike bleeds (intensity) and poison (heal debuff) you can generally regen/heal through the damage.

The niche burning would fill is a difficult to remove condition meant to counteract Regeneration more than to actually cause intense damage over a short period (like bleeds).

I see no reason to compete with bleeds for short duration condition damage without make it exactly like bleeds and it seems like nearly every other debuff that a condition could apply is already done by another condition.

Edit: Actually another mechanic I just thought of.

-Burning could remove boons on application and every X seconds after. It’d fit in with the purging nature of the condition.

IamDuddits.1692:

-Burning could remove boons on application and every X seconds after. It’d fit in with the purging nature of the condition.

Secondary effects like what have been proposed here are probably a better approach without affecting burning damage directly. I particularly like yours since it seems inline with some of the other thinking we have heard from the devs about boon hate.

Obtena.7952:

IamDuddits.1692:

-Burning could remove boons on application and every X seconds after. It’d fit in with the purging nature of the condition.

Secondary effects like what have been proposed here are probably a better approach without affecting burning damage directly. I particularly like yours since it seems inline with some of the other thinking we have heard from the devs about boon hate.

Most of the useful (unique) secondary effects are already conditions. Even the purge that I suggested is actually rather redundant because it’s offered as a trait (Searing Flames being a specific example).

There are a few thematic effects I can think of, but they seem redundant:

-Take increased damage while burned (also achieved with Radiant Power)
-Reduced Movement Speed while burned (Crippled does this)
-Reduced outgoing damage (Weakness does this)

I’m not sure these are included in traits or runes:

-Reduced Endurance Regeneration
-Deals a fraction of the damage as AoE to nearby allies (could see some issues with this idea and AoE burns like Purging Flames)

Enlighten me if I’m missing something, but as of right now I see little reason to take burning over bleeds (it’s assumed that a bleed build can stack enough to make the bleed damage greater, ~8 stacks).
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The only enlightenment I can offer is that burning is an intrinsic part of the Guardian toolset and bleeding is not. It’s easier to work with the tools you have.

Obtena.7952:

The only enlightenment I can offer is that burning is an intrinsic part of the Guardian toolset and bleeding is not. It’s easier to work with the tools you have.

I guess it meant on a more general level. Guardians from what I can see would have no reason to go Condition Damage. Burning already does really good damage without any CD, but the problem is its fairly easy to mitigate most of the damage because it relies on duration stacking. For Guardians in particular it’s not too big of a deal because it’s more of a supplementary damage, similar to retaliation, but I can’t really see anyone really building around it for their damage output.

I really like the idea of having a secondary effect of burning. Reducing outgoing dmg seems the most logical. Decreasing precision is probably not enough but seemed logical as most characters scream “fire” or “I’m on fire” and proceed to panic before purging their conditions.

@Obtena – I really love playing my burn dmg build Guardian. Nothing more fun than torching all that moves and keeping the burn going via traits & skills. I just don’t see a way to be viable in a group.
The single trip the Guardian took to WvW I did kill a stealthed thief but I am still unsure if I applied the burn before they stealthed or after. If it had been after and I was 100% positive, that would be a single plus for the build. I’m sure someone else knows the answer to that. I just don’t want to bring it back to WvW until I get different gear so I can be of use.
My carrion/undead plus traits allows me to pull off ~600/dps but it gets mitigated very quickly. I did try to offset with traiting for the sword but my direct damage is pitiful. And when traiting for burning, torch, sword that leaves little for the offhand secondary weapon.
If you or anyone can find a Guardian burn build that’s viable in groups please let me know. It’s the character I have the most fun on but can’t take to WvW.

Unfortunately, I don’t know of any.

I am experimenting with a 2 second passive VoJ build. Why bother?

1. It’s too short to bother removing actively
2. opponents don’t consider Guardian with burning a threat (so they tend to leave you alone more)
3. It’s long enough to give you a way to permaburn with Virtue 20.

Does it work? It has limited use roaming with one or two others. It’s pretty useless with siege or zerg.

I thought the dev’s original intention for burns(correct me if I’m wrong) is that it has the highest damage per tick as it is compared to bleed or poison in a single stack. So they felt it would be highly OP if it had any other perks added on top.