Guild Wars 2

Hi, I’m a new 80 necro’, and I’ve decided to adopt a condition-based build. But I’ve hit a wall: I am unsure whether to run a rabid weapon with undead runes for maximized damage, or a giver’s weapon with lyssa/mad king/x for maximized duration. However, I’m not looking to be given a strait-up answer of “this is better”. I’ve played the game long enough to analyse the benefits of both setups, HOWEVER, I run into issues when it comes to how exactly the mechanics function.

Assume the following setup:

Spite: 30%
Giver’s weapon: 10%
Runes of Lyssa x2: 10%
Runes of the Mad King x2: 10%
Veggie pizza: 40%

Total condition duration bonus: 100%

Master of Terror: +50% on fear
Lingering Curse: +33% on scepter

My questions are:

1) According to the wiki, Lingering Curse allows your conditions to be extended beyond the 100% extra condition duration limit. Is this information true?

2) Does Lingering Curse provide a boost only to scepter-generated conditions, aka, the bleed/poison from the Blood Curse chain, and the bleed/cripple from Grasping Dead only or does it provide a boost to all conditions applied while wielding a scepter (such as those provided passively by gear, such as Sigil of Earth, by traits, such as Dhuumfire and Barbed Precision, and offhand skills, such as Enfeebling Blood)?

3) Seeing that Lingering Curse may allow conditions to bypass the natural +100% limit, does Master of Terror function the same, in that it could be used to generate +150% duration fears?

4) How are partial ticks truly calculated? I remember reading somewhere that a 1.5 seconds fear would tick once on the first application, and twice on the second, and then back to one time… etc. Is this the case?

5) Given that 4) may be true, is this also the case for other damaging conditons (bleed, burn, poison, torment)? This makes all the difference in terms of the importance of breakpoints.

6) Given that 4) may not be true, would non-damaging conditions, (chill, cripple, weakness, etc…) still apply their effects for quarters/halves… of seconds? For instance, would one see the benefits of a 1.5 seconds chill versus a 1 second chill, whereas one wouldn’t see it with a 1.5 seconds bleed (assuming again that 4) isn’t true)?

I know that this is some heavy stuff, but one of you may know. If this remains dead, I’ll do the testing myself.

1) Yes. Lingering curse increases the base duration of Scepter conditions, meaning that when the game looks for the 100% cap, it doesn’t see any increase from the trait.

2) Only those applied by the scepter skills.

3) No, it is just like the normal +% duration, but only functions on fear.

4) Partial ticks are not a thing. What happens is a “global” timer of sorts is applied when a person is affected by something that is timed. For example, if you are affected by a 30 second bleed, then the timer starts the instant you are hit by the bleed, and expires when the last thing that requires a timer leaves you. Lets assume that 0.7 seconds after that bleed was applied, a 1.5 second bleed was applied. That 1.5 second bleed will stay on for 1.5 seconds only, however it ticks in coordination with the “global” timer, meaning it will tick at timer seconds 1 and 2, corresponding to when it has 1.2 seconds, and 0.2 seconds left on its duration. All ticks work this way, except Torment, which double ticks.

5) As above, every damaging condition acts this way, which is why in sPvP the general threshold was 70% duration on fears, making is the ticked twice very often (this is likely not the case anymore, with the different terror/builds being used).

6) Yes. Conditions still last the full time. However since ticking conditions only tick once per second, after their final tick the rest of the duration is essentially wasted, damage wise. However conditions like poison and terror, which both have secondary effects will still last their full duration. To answer your specific case, yes you will notice a difference, the 1.5 second chill has an extra 0.5 seconds of effect on the target. The bleed again, depends on its duration compared to the global timer.

From what I know:
1) Yes. I believe that Lingering Curse changes the base duration of the conditions of the scepter skills, then that new duration is boosted by any condition duration stats you’ve got. This may mean that Lingering Curses + 100% condition duration isn’t 133% bonus condition duration, but 166%.
2) It only applies to the base skill conditions, no equipment, utilities or even off-hand conditions will be augmented.
3) Nope! Lingering Curses is very special.
4) The simple answer is: it’s a probability. A 3.43s (damaging) condition has a 43% chance of applying 4 ticks of damage, and thus a 57% chance of applying 3 ticks of damage.

5) Sort of covered above, but yes: bleed, burn, and poison for sure act like this. I’m not sure how torment’s “double damage if moving” works in relation to this check, but I’m quite certain the base damage at least acts similarly.
6) You can see the benefits of 1.x second conditions. For an easy example, get 10% condition duration and a warhorn. Locust Swarm beside a target, and you’ll see the extra 0.1 seconds of cripple applied each second gradually stack up.

I actually need to test the lingering curses + condition duration thing myself a little, now that I think about it.

Thanks for the answers. Most correlates with my findings, notably 1) and 2).