Guild Wars 2

Hello,

I was wondering what community thinks (and if someone did numbercrunching) with the Giving weapons (that are vitality, precision and +10% condition duration).

Has anyone considered them for use? Do you think they would be better than rabid? Do you think stacking duration might be viable?

Comes down to decreasing your damage in place of increasing your duration.

If you consider a max damage build, it will have 40% food, 30% spite, and 20% hemo, for 90% duration to all bleeds (70% to the rest). That is pretty darn close to the cap of 100%, and you didn’t have to give up any damage to get there.

Taking a Givers’ one or two hand weapon gives up ~100-200 condition damage respectively. Is that worth 10% duration?

Maybe to you it is, but in general it isn’t . The same could be said of Toxic focusing crystals, which trade 50-100 condition damage from 10% duration. They are a better choice than givers’, but still not ideal.

Or you could use nightmare runes, over scavenging runes, but again you are giving up 50-100 condition damage for 10%.

At the end of the day, it comes down to build and preference. Conditions are garbage in PVE, and in PVP, there is a lot of condition removal. Does that extra 10% even really matter? Most cases, only the STRONG control conditions need max duration, like fear, which you can max out with master of terror. Max duration is very nice for our limited immoblize skills, but they have long cooldowns or are wonky to use (like bone fiend).

If you have some niche build for countering melandru users, then stack away, and laugh at them as you counter their counter-build. But in general it is not worth it no.

Giver’s stats aren’t even available in PvP, so presumably this is a WvW/PvE question.

That said, I like condition duration a lot more than damage myself for the following reason: Epidemic exponentially grows the duration of conditions when you have greater condition duration. Consider applying a 3s immobilize on one mob. It lasts 6s with 100% condition duration. If you then epidemic that immediately, it will be around 5s when Epidemic hits, which spreads to everyone adjacent for 10s. This grows really quickly, and for other powerful conditions like Weakness/Chill/Cripple, you can maintain permanent conditions on high-power mobs/players in this manner. Furthermore, it helps a lot to counteract the -Condition Duration food/runes that you see in WvW a lot and keep your condi build at least relevant against them.

Thus I argue that condition duration is generally better if you use it right, but you want to do it smartly. You don’t want full Giver’s gear, but you do want to find a good mix for enabling you to have “high enough” condition duration. You do want high enough condition damage to at least be threatening with your conditions, but when you’re focusing heavily on condition duration remember that it affects all other conditions as well in a major helpful way.

Those are just my thoughts anyway.

Take Mark of Blood from staff.

3 stacks, 8s duration.

With 90% (30% spite, 40% food, 20% hemo) bleeding, mark of blood lasts for 15.25 seconds

with 1780 condition damage, over 15.25 seconds, that’s 5918 dmg.

change staff to givers..

condition damage drops to 1591, and now mark of blood lasts for 16 seconds and does 5858 damage. 60 less damage. not only are you doing less damage, but conditions are cleansed pretty often now. i think it’s always better to have high condition damage than it is to have higher duration.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Giver’s stats aren’t even available in PvP, so presumably this is a WvW/PvE question.

That said, I like condition duration a lot more than damage myself for the following reason: Epidemic exponentially grows the duration of conditions when you have greater condition duration. Consider applying a 3s immobilize on one mob. It lasts 6s with 100% condition duration. If you then epidemic that immediately, it will be around 5s when Epidemic hits, which spreads to everyone adjacent for 10s. This grows really quickly, and for other powerful conditions like Weakness/Chill/Cripple, you can maintain permanent conditions on high-power mobs/players in this manner. Furthermore, it helps a lot to counteract the -Condition Duration food/runes that you see in WvW a lot and keep your condi build at least relevant against them.

Thus I argue that condition duration is generally better if you use it right, but you want to do it smartly. You don’t want full Giver’s gear, but you do want to find a good mix for enabling you to have “high enough” condition duration. You do want high enough condition damage to at least be threatening with your conditions, but when you’re focusing heavily on condition duration remember that it affects all other conditions as well in a major helpful way.

Those are just my thoughts anyway.

I don’t think epidemic works the way you think it does. I wish it did though…

Epidemic just copies debuffs to nearby targets. If the single target had a 5 second immob, the rest of the epidemic’ed targets would have the same 5 second immobilize. It would be wildly OP if it double all condition durations when it spread them.

I can’t think of a 3 second AOE immob that you could use… except for maybe pairing with a condi 100% duration warrior.

Anyhow, bottom line is that your duration does not get applied to conditions that you spread through epidemic. Whatever the target duration is, is the same duration anyone hit with the epi will have.