Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,
First off let me say that I have played a good bit of moos before, I played through wow, Aion, and SWOTR. However I never really took them seriously and was just a casual player, so some of the technical details elude me. I love this game and its the first I really want to play meta with.

First question, I heard that conditionmancers have two drawbacks,
1: You can only have 1600 condi dmg, and 2: a mob can only have 25 stacks of bleed. So does that mean you can only have 1600 worth of DoTs on a mob at a time? or you can only have 1600 condi dmg on your character (like what it says in the hero tab)? Cause from what I gather even with full spec in curses and full rampager gear my condi dmg will be at like 835? Did I just do the math wrong or what?

^^ That is important to my understanding of condi dmg vs. condi durration.

Another question I have is what exactly is “tooltip”. I keep hearing that there is something wrong with it, and that it has something to do with condition effects.

And plague form vs. lich form.
I dont understand plague form at all but I see alot of condimancers running it in PvE. So it ticks 1 time a second as poison? that doesnt really seem very threatening. Especially when lich form can cast fear and more marks.

By the way im going a 20/30/20/0 build. for the fear does damage and knockdowns etc causes fear.
Thanks for your help. sorry these question are all so nooby.

There is no maximum amount of conditiondamage you can aquire. Of course at some point, your gear is maxed out.

The tooltip is the description you can read, if you move your mouse over a skill. Some + % conditionduration buffs are calculated wrong. For example, conditionduration is capped at 100%. If you increase a 6 second bleed by 500%, it will last 12 seconds, but the tooltip shows 36 seconds and a much higher damage.

If you are playing PvE the best condition build is currently 30/30/10.

Plague is great because it’s a ridiculous defense buff. The skills it grants are places on #s 1-3, and allows you to spam bleed, blind, and cripple while sustaining poison.

Your exact condition damage isn’t really something you need to worry about, but having the righty gear and quality gear is more of an actual concern. The damage number just controls how hard your conditions tick for. There is no cap. And 835 isn’t right for a geared 80 toon.

Plague as a PVE elite can spam blinds and poison to assist your group and deal AOE bleeds all with high defense. It’s more useful in pvp/wvw in my opinion, but a good skill.

And for what it’s worth, that 20 you have in spite could probably be best used elsewhere.

Zerroth.2401:

First question, I heard that conditionmancers have two drawbacks,
1: You can only have 1600 condi dmg, and 2: a mob can only have 25 stacks of bleed. So does that mean you can only have 1600 worth of DoTs on a mob at a time? or you can only have 1600 condi dmg on your character (like what it says in the hero tab)? Cause from what I gather even with full spec in curses and full rampager gear my condi dmg will be at like 835? Did I just do the math wrong or what?

^^ That is important to my understanding of condi dmg vs. condi durration.

Your amount of condition damage modifies the conditions you apply, thereby increasing damage per each tick of the condition. See, for example, the wiki page for Bleeding:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bleeding

The damage formula is:
(0.05 * Condition Damage) + 42.5 per stack per second at level 80

So, at 835 cond dmg, each bleed will tick for 84.25 damage. If you have 10 stacks of bleed on the enemy, then you are doing 842.5 damage per sec.

Note that each condition type (bleed, poison, etc.) has its own formula. See the wiki.

If you are using Rampagers armor & trinkets, I’m not suprised your condition damage is at 835. Usually for a condition-based build you would use Rabid or Carrion (or a mix).

For the various stat combinations of level 80 gear, see:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature#Triple_attribute

Edit: Also note that total damage from conditions is affected by your condition duration. So, if you have a 5 sec bleed which does 84.25 per tick, then that bleed will do 421.25 dmg over the 5 seconds. If you add condition duration (from food, Spite traits points, Givers weapons, sigils, runes), you will increase the total damage. If you have 60% condition duration, your 5 sec bleed will run for 5 * 1.6 = 8 seconds. Now your total dmg from the bleed will be 84.25*8=674 dmg. So, going for a mix of cond duration and cond damage that fits your goals and playstyle is usually better than going for just increasing cond dmg – at least in PvE. In PvP or WvW, conditions tend to get cleared by enemies, so condition duration is less valuable there.

just my few cents:

• You can push over 1600 malice depending on gear.
• Structures dont take con dmg which sucks in some dungeons
• There is a limit to how much con dps any target can take, unlike direct dmg.
• There is a hard cap on con duration bonus, which you will want to hit (I think dur yields better up to its cap once malice is over 1000. Dont quote me on it though xD.) . The limit is 100% (gm scepter trait is an exception to this so max is 133 w/ scepter)
• To hit the duration cap, id recommended sup krait x3, sup afflicted x3, 30 points to spite, 40 from consumable like pizza or koi, but you could sub out 20% on any of these with the 20% bleed dur trait.
• vitality and toughness are somewhat important bc of tuning crystals.