Guild Wars 2

I haven’t seen the underlying mechanics behind how conditions stack on targets explained elsewhere.

As I understand it it works like this.

PlayerA attacks first and adds Burning for 5 seconds on Igor.
PlayerB attacks second and adds Burning for 5 seconds on Igor.
PlayerC attacks third and adds Burning for 5 seconds on Igor.

Now the Monster have 15 seconds of Burning effect if you mouse over the icon.
However damage isn’t applied all at the same time.

In fact it’s queued.

So for the first five seconds of the fight with Igor, PlayerA’s Burning effect ticks for Damage every second over the five second span.
Once PlayerA’s effect has expired, PlayerB’s Burning effect ticks for damage, and so on with PlayerC.

So for the first 5 seconds of the fight, PlayerB’s Burning effect is not doing any damage.
And for the first 10 seconds of the fight, PlayerC’s Burning effect is not doing any damage.

Poison and Burning works the same way as far as I can test.

It’s the same case with Bleeding, once you hit the stack cap of 25, as far as I can tell, though this is more difficult to test.

This works “fine” in small scale encounters where you aren’t as prone to run into similar conditions being used, but becomes a significant issue in larger scale encounters. Not to mention lower damage conditions “block” the damage for higher damage conditions in certain situations.

The above have been tested in the mists and through observation in dynamic events.