Guild Wars 2

Right now I run a Rabid Condition build with 4 Runes of the Nightmare and 2 Runes of the Krait.

Is there better combos out there for rune damage? I’ve been looking at Rune of the Undead, but it seems fairly vanilla, and I like the 25% extra bleed duration from my rune combo (though I know last I read runes weren’t applying condition duration correctly)

On a rabid setup going givers weapons on Scepter and Dagger while having Undead Runes ends up with more condition damage at the cost of only 5% bleed duration.

Andele.1306:

On a rabid setup going givers weapons on Scepter and Dagger while having Undead Runes ends up with more condition damage at the cost of only 5% bleed duration.

Not sure this is right.

Full undead runes in rabid gear would get you around 265 or so condition damage from the runes, and the 5% bonus from toughness (roughly). Nightmare and krait would give you 10% to all conditions, 25% to bleed, and about 110 condition damage.

If you go Giver’s weapons, then you are giving up 180 condition damage on your weapons.

Nightmare + Krait + Rabid weapons = 290 condition damage and 25% bleed/10% all
Undead + Givers’ weapons = 260 condition damage and 20% all

Just further evidence that Giver’s are poorly implemented and executed from a stats perspective. Horribly under-budget, and WITHOUT condition damage… even though they have a primary stat for condition duration… just silly.

That being said, if you want to maximize damage, you really have to go undead runes, and get your duration from somewhere else… Spite/rare veggie/hemo. Don’t go giver’s weapons, as 10% increased condition duration is not worth losing 180 or 90 condition damage, (at least not for necro).

Rennoko.5731:

Andele.1306:

On a rabid setup going givers weapons on Scepter and Dagger while having Undead Runes ends up with more condition damage at the cost of only 5% bleed duration.

Not sure this is right.

Full undead runes in rabid gear would get you around 265 or so condition damage from the runes, and the 5% bonus from toughness (roughly). Nightmare and krait would give you 10% to all conditions, 25% to bleed, and about 110 condition damage.

If you go Giver’s weapons, then you are giving up 180 condition damage on your weapons.

Nightmare + Krait + Rabid weapons = 290 condition damage and 25% bleed/10% all
Undead + Givers’ weapons = 260 condition damage and 20% all

Just further evidence that Giver’s are poorly implemented and executed from a stats perspective. Horribly under-budget, and WITHOUT condition damage… even though they have a primary stat for condition duration… just silly.

That being said, if you want to maximize damage, you really have to go undead runes, and get your duration from somewhere else… Spite/rare veggie/hemo. Don’t go giver’s weapons, as 10% increased condition duration is not worth losing 180 or 90 condition damage, (at least not for necro).

Has there been any theorycrafting regarding Condition Damage vs Duration?

I know duration is obviously only be good to the extent that it gives you another tick, but damage is just on the whole better?

Plenty of theorycrating as been done on the subject. Take the following assumptions:

1. We are in PVE in a dungeon against a boss that can bleed.
2. The party has no other bleeders.
3. We have as much cond damage as we can possibly get while maintaining 100% bleeding duration. (use of foods/traits/runes)
4. We have as much crit as we can possibly get while maintaining our condition damage at max. (RABID gear)

That is your max potentional damage scenario for conditions.
If we focus in on point 3:

I can get 40% bleeding duration from food, 20% bleeding from Hemo, 30% bleeding from spite. That is now 90% bleeding duration, and I can wear full rabid, and I can also take undead runes. If I get stacks on trash before the boss with a weapon that has superior corruption on it, and swap to sigil agony on the boss, I now have max condition damage, and 100% bleeding duration.

So why get krait/afflicted/etc when you can get 100% duration without it, AND max your condition damage? Yes you have no defensive stats from traits, but its PVE, and you can make due without.

As far as I am concerned, that is the extent and/or end of the theorycrafting. It is pointless to theorycraft WvW or SPvP, as no one ever is going to allow duration to get its full effect. Practically in PVE, someone in your party is going to share bleeds with you, so you really only have 15 or less bleeds to work with, and since you can already easily get to 70-100% bleeding duration while maxing condition damage, that would be the road to go down.

All condition maxing aside, in practical terms you are better off with a full offensive build that takes advantage of vuln, crit damage, as long as your team isn’t bleed capped. Like rampagers in a hybrid build. That will get you more mileage from that power and all stat equipment.

In a world where the bleed cap was NOT 25, and could float up higher, it is possible that a full rabid/undead setup could approach a hybrid build in raw damage, but that would require having more than 25 bleeds available, which isn’t possible right now.

Zyphent.2967:

Rennoko.5731:

Andele.1306:

On a rabid setup going givers weapons on Scepter and Dagger while having Undead Runes ends up with more condition damage at the cost of only 5% bleed duration.

Not sure this is right.

Full undead runes in rabid gear would get you around 265 or so condition damage from the runes, and the 5% bonus from toughness (roughly). Nightmare and krait would give you 10% to all conditions, 25% to bleed, and about 110 condition damage.

If you go Giver’s weapons, then you are giving up 180 condition damage on your weapons.

Nightmare + Krait + Rabid weapons = 290 condition damage and 25% bleed/10% all
Undead + Givers’ weapons = 260 condition damage and 20% all

Just further evidence that Giver’s are poorly implemented and executed from a stats perspective. Horribly under-budget, and WITHOUT condition damage… even though they have a primary stat for condition duration… just silly.

That being said, if you want to maximize damage, you really have to go undead runes, and get your duration from somewhere else… Spite/rare veggie/hemo. Don’t go giver’s weapons, as 10% increased condition duration is not worth losing 180 or 90 condition damage, (at least not for necro).

Has there been any theorycrafting regarding Condition Damage vs Duration?

I know duration is obviously only be good to the extent that it gives you another tick, but damage is just on the whole better?

I have not only done theorycrafting around this but also proven some facts in a few ways actually, in my condition related videos.

First i proved that necromancer can break then 100% bleeding cap, and can go up to 133%. I’ve proven you can do that without going into spite. I have explained why duration > condition damage with end game gear stats.

It’s really easy… just go to this condition damage calculator (which i tested and found it displays the correct values) and do the following: knowing that you need 133% bleeding duration to keep more or less 25 stacks of bleeding on the target… insert your condition damage AT 25 stacks = ? DPS, now insert half of those stacks AT your new condition damage (with the extra condition damage you got from converting half your duration into extra condition damage) = ? DPS.

I rest my case…

Yes, but the real discussion isn’t is duration vs. not duration worth it, but rather maximizing duration first or condition damage first. My point is you can actually maximize both, with the right setup, using the spite tree. I hate the spite tree for PVP, but it is fine for PVE (with conditions). You can get to 100% bleed (133% on sceptor) with undead runes, which would be the max condition damage with the max duration.

I run condition duration over condi damage as I find higher stacks = more damage. my bleeds still tick for roughly 110 (without corruption stacks) and I can reach the bleed cap solo. I know that is seen as a waste in pve but when fighting solo in pvp wvw or big mobs in pve you actually feel very bursty being able to put 25 stacks on a target. I took some of nemesis advice on condi duration and altered it to match my play style.

I agree with you too rennoko, I just prefer my set up at the moment. im currently wasting some condition damage on 2 runes of centaur I think for the extra bleed duration so think ill swap them out tonight.

Duration is greater than condition damage at a certain point, the problem lies in the fact that in both PVP and PVE Damage will win because of the 25 stack cap (in pve) and the sheer volume of condition cleansing in pvp.

This means in most cases Damage > than Duration unless you are the only condition player in the run. It’s why the Necromancer support and Hybrid are becoming more popular in the Necro Community. Other classes can build their stacks faster allowing which means we need to find someway to benefit grouping.

yes I agree with what your saying bas, the reason I go duration is because not many of my regular party go conditions, mostly warrs guards and a mesmer here and there, which is why I find the duration beneficial.

a nice grouping for small roaming fights is to have a ?/D ele pop their 5 earth ability and epidemic right when u engage.

Bull Zooker.1672:

yes I agree with what your saying bas, the reason I go duration is because not many of my regular party go conditions, mostly warrs guards and a mesmer here and there, which is why I find the duration beneficial.

a nice grouping for small roaming fights is to have a ?/D ele pop their 5 earth ability and epidemic right when u engage.

Its build dependent too…. If you want to run zero points in spite, its not a bad idea to run bleed/condition duration runes. I changed over to UNDEAD beceause I like the terror ticks, and I am OKAY with 70% bleeding duration in WvW w/ 100% fear.

Careful with mesmers… their piddly bleeds caused from clones can push off bleeds like you wouldn’t believe. and pretty much every mesmer has that trait.

Rennoko.5731:

Not sure this is right.

Full undead runes in rabid gear would get you around 265 or so condition damage from the runes, and the 5% bonus from toughness (roughly). Nightmare and krait would give you 10% to all conditions, 25% to bleed, and about 110 condition damage.

If you go Giver’s weapons, then you are giving up 180 condition damage on your weapons.

Nightmare + Krait + Rabid weapons = 290 condition damage and 25% bleed/10% all
Undead + Givers’ weapons = 260 condition damage and 20% all

Just further evidence that Giver’s are poorly implemented and executed from a stats perspective. Horribly under-budget, and WITHOUT condition damage… even though they have a primary stat for condition duration… just silly.

That being said, if you want to maximize damage, you really have to go undead runes, and get your duration from somewhere else… Spite/rare veggie/hemo. Don’t go giver’s weapons, as 10% increased condition duration is not worth losing 180 or 90 condition damage, (at least not for necro).

Both the vit (DS) and precision (more crit chance for bleeds) help on the givers weapons, in total in best in slot rabid you lose out on 60 condition damage (rounded up ofc, its like 29.4; whats around 60 dps loss if you manage to do nothing but spam bip and scepter 1 and 2 while critting at least every 3rd hit to hold around 25 stacks) in trade for 10% more condition duration on poison, vuln, weakness and chill, not to mention that givers and undead runes are the cheaper to craft and the gap is reduced the more toughness you get (ally traits, warrior banners and weapon swapping to a rabid staff, etc)
Also if the person has 30 into spite (30%), pizza (40%), hemo (20%); 1 givers weapon is enough to push it to 100% bleed duration resulting in a 60 condition damage gain.
Not that you are wrong with givers not being the optimal setup, but it does provide overall more efficent benefits than a bleed rune setup would in conjunction with best in slot weapons (be it givers on staff if you want to get the BiP and chill/poison/fear durations up a bit;whats pointless; or on scepter for longer spammy bleeds; as in something that can be noticed).

Andele.1306:

Both the vit (DS) and precision (more crit chance for bleeds) help on the givers weapons, in total in best in slot rabid you lose out on 60 condition damage (rounded up ofc, its like 29.4; whats around 60 dps loss if you manage to do nothing but spam bip and scepter 1 and 2 while critting at least every 3rd hit to hold around 25 stacks) in trade for 10% more condition duration on poison, vuln, weakness and chill, not to mention that givers and undead runes are the cheaper to craft and the gap is reduced the more toughness you get (ally traits, warrior banners and weapon swapping to a rabid staff, etc)
Also if the person has 30 into spite (30%), pizza (40%), hemo (20%); 1 givers weapon is enough to push it to 100% bleed duration resulting in a 60 condition damage gain.
Not that you are wrong with givers not being the optimal setup, but it does provide overall more efficent benefits than a bleed rune setup would in conjunction with best in slot weapons (be it givers on staff if you want to get the BiP and chill/poison/fear durations up a bit;whats pointless; or on scepter for longer spammy bleeds; as in something that can be noticed).

Rabid mainhand gives: 90 condition damage / 64 prec / 64 toughness
Givers anyhand gives: 10% condition duration / 64 prec / 64 vit

Not sure where you get a loss of 60 condition damage from in your above post.

No matter how you slice it, you are giving up at a minimum, 90 condition damage by taking a giver’s 1h weapon, or 180 by taking a giver’s staff. If you factor in toughness from undead runes, its a little more.

I have a hard time seeing in any even niche build a place for them. The stat is horribly underbudget compared to what you get from food. There are practically always better ways to get duration than using giver’s. Even in the theoretical world is a horrible stat combination.

If they used the same stat budget used with the food items, it would be worth it hands down:

100 condition damage= Top primary stat for food damage
40% condition duration = Top primary stat for food duration

180 condition damage = Top primary stat for damage on weapon
10% condition duration = Top primary stat for duration on weapon

In food, you can trade off 2.5 condition damage to gain 1% duration.
In 2h weapons, you must trade off 18 condition damage to gain 1% duration
In 1h weapons, you must trade off 9 condition damage to gain 1% duration

I could go into the math on Krait/Afflicted runes, but it splits the difference (between food budget and giver’s budget in terms of cost I believe). I would love more than anything that they would at least look at the budge for the 2h and make it 20%…. at least its in line with the 1h then. Still not worth it statistically, but better.

I was going with Giver+Undead vs Rabid+krait/Nightmare combo, as mentioned in my first reply…

Should note this would be a theoretical choice right now as Nightmare Runes aren’t even working on giving duration, nor Giver AFAIK. Hopefully it will be fixed on the 26th.

Andele.1306:

I was going with Giver+Undead vs Rabid+krait/Nightmare combo, as mentioned in my first reply…

Yeah I got it now. 20% duration on one set vs. 25% duraiton on the other. I never really considered using Giver’s with undead, but I see your point. Statistically its still weaker, but its a third option I had not considered for stats.

Biggest thing I don’t like about Giver’s is the 10% on staff. If you are using duration to extend your fears to a certain percent, then you probably want the same duration while both weapons sets are out. And it’s such a waste to take it on staff, and you get 10% less than your other set, so you are unbalanced.

The biggest thing I don’t like about the Givers weapons is they do nothing apart from sacrifice stats.

Bugged since launch people.