Guild Wars 2

Hia forums. As a warrior, I use the good ’ole sword and board combo. Since the sword is supposed to do condition damage I decided to try to get in stats there. I have around 550(i think), is that any good?

Preemptive thanks -Mr. Generic Name

Splitting your damage up across different types is never as good as concentrating them.

Sword does good power damage quickly, not as well as axe, but there’s a trait to make someone who’s bleeding take 10% more damage (Other weapons can bleed on crit).

Lastly, of the damaging conditions bleed benefits the least from condition damage boosting. Unless you plan on getting those other conditions, I do not recommend stacking condition damage except for mightstacking, which boosts your normal damage as well.

Oh, well that’s a bummer >_< Well thanks for the info I do believe I have that trait, along with a decent amount of crit damage/chance, so damage is pretty good, like you said.

Arms Grandmaster(25): Attack of Opportunity: Increases damage to bleeding foes by 10%.
But you can’t get that without Arms Adept: Precise Strikes 33% chance to cause bleeding on critical hits, so really any fast-hitting weapon will do.

warriors are about the worst class for condition builds too
(probably tied with guardian)
a (nearly) viable way of using a condition build is to use the longbow burst skill and then switch to rifle and spam 1, this will apply bleed and burning each shot

if those 550 is at lvl 80 then no taht is really bad, very few classes/builds benefit from both power and condition damage, you either take one or the other, in whihc case you should get atleast 1200+ preferably 1500+ condition damage total

Well, sword/bow has two finishers that would create fire armor, which also would burn his target on top of the burn from combustive shot. Can easily keep the armor up 6 seconds (not sure if boon duration affects). With bleed on crit + vuln on crit + sword bleeds, he could self stack 25 bleeds, which is the strongest DoT in the game (you can break 3k a second just with bleed).

Guardian definitely sucks at condition, but warrior does not. With the ability to keep two constant heavy DoTs (with longbow and sword or rifle) and two other combat conditions (vuln and weakness), they can play it seriously. HOWEVER the warrior has few ground target skills, so they always have to physically hit the target to keep their DoTs up. Add in that fact, and that most their skills are centered around physical damage bursts, and a condition build really is sacrificing major potential damage.

Conclusion: Yes, you can make a build that can do some real condition damage well. However that build will pale in comparison to a power/crit warrior damage wise. If you’re looking to meta game and go for damage, don’t go condition. If you’re looking for a flavor build to play how you want to play, go for it! You can do it and not suck.

Actually, Warriors suck as condition spec. Our main condition is Bleed which stacks very poorly with Condition Damage. Just go for Power/Precision and let your Bleed/Burns be a nice bonus on the side.

Manticore Five.9867:

Lastly, of the damaging conditions bleed benefits the least from condition damage boosting.

Oglaf.1074:

Our main condition is Bleed which stacks very poorly with Condition Damage.

Those statements are false.

At 1200 condition damage, a Bleed increases from 42.5 to 102.5 (241% of original damage), while a Burning goes from 328 to 628 (191% of original damage).

Poison and Confusion are very close to Bleed on % increase but that doesn’t interest to Warrior.

Bleeds does less damage by itself than other conditions, but it can be stacked (and Warrior has some good ways to stack them), and with Condition Damage it becomes much better than Burning (the advantage of Burning over Bleed is that if removed and reapplied it still has all its efficency without needing to build stacks). In fact the case where you should go Burning over Bleeding is when you’re not investing on Condition Damage.

I’m sorry, but you’re just wrong.

You’re probably wikitheorycrafting and forgot that 0.25 is MORE than 0.05. Pay better attention to the decimal point next time before presuming to lecture others.

Manticore Five.9867:

I’m sorry, but you’re just wrong.

You’re probably wikitheorycrafting and forgot that 0.25 is MORE than 0.05. Pay better attention to the decimal point next time before presuming to lecture others.

Do the maths…

If you’ve ever done a bleeding build, you know how the basis is to stack them. Once stacked bleeds are more powerful than burning, and each bleed increases more than burning in %.

That 0.05 is really a 0.5 if you put 10 bleeds, while with burning it’s still 0.25 because it stacks on duration.

Also bleeds are generally easier to put which means you can reach a stable number of stacks and maintain them over time anyway.

What you said is only true if you could only stack 1 bleed. Being able to stack many of them means you can’t plainly say “it’s less because it’s 0.05” because that’s completly false, it’s 0.05 PER stack.

Condition Damage is far more useful for bleeders than for burners (very few Guardians invest on it for example, even if they can keep burn).

You’re right that stacking more bleeds and assuming no one clears them ever, that condi bleed damage effectiveness might start to approach condi burn damage effectiveness.

Problem is, aside from the burst skill warrior stacks bleeds slowly, so outside of theorycraftingland, bleed scaling still sucks for warriors.

You’re much better off strength stacking, so you can take advantage of both sides of the boon.

Manticore Five.9867:

You’re right that stacking more bleeds and assuming no one clears them ever, that condi bleed damage effectiveness might start to approach condi burn damage effectiveness.

Problem is, aside from the burst skill warrior stacks bleeds slowly, so outside of theorycraftingland, bleed scaling still sucks for warriors.

You’re much better off strength stacking, so you can take advantage of both sides of the boon.

I agree that power is much better for Warriors, never said the contrary.

The statement was about what you said of bleed stacking poorly with CD, when it’s not (Burn is the condition that gets the less beneift from CD when compared to its effect without CD at all).

Warriors may not be the best bleeders when compared to Thieves or Necros, but they have some nice and good access to bleeds, and can easily maintain enough bleeds to pass the damage done by burning. Not to mention burn is less accessible, than bleed.

If you’ve ever tried a bleeding build on any profession, as they’re usually featured on auto-attacks, it’s not that hard to reapply them if someone removes them (in fact many times they’re removed early before your big bleed attacks are applied and by then their cond removal is gone). Burns after removal return to its peak damage faster, but normally it’s harder to reapply it even with Longbow (as traits for faster bursts are on a tree that doesn’t synergize with conditions).

Warriors have more efficent direct damage builds than condition builds? Granted, never said the contrary.

Bleed stacks poorly with CD? False. On any profession.

Theorycraftingland (I liked that term, good way to trylook wise when dismissing facts that are based on real experience…) or not, a bleeder is 240% better at his job with 1200 CD (a bit lower than average CD from condition speced builds) while a burner is only 190% better at it. You don’t need to theorycraft, I’ve tried multiple condition builds with different professions and experience is the best way to measure if those conditions will be there on your opponent or will be removed all the time. Bleeds will be there because it’s easy to access even when removed, just try it.

Burn is more of a supplementary condition to go with your main damage source, as it has good damage without CD investment, but you can’t build to depend on it as the damage is limited to 1 stack. Bleed is a condition that you can build for it, gets more benefit from CD than burning and you can depend on it. Just try and test it before dismissing statements based on experience as theorycraft

Lokheit has the right of it. You may be scared of the “.05 * condition damage” with your own wikitheorycrafting, forgetting it is PER stack. My condition build has 1520 condition damage. That gives a tick of 118 per stack. Let’s say I have 10 stacks of bleed (which is no effort bleed stacking) – that is 1180 per SECOND. Without condition damage, that is 425 per second. That’s a 277% increase. You get 25 stacks, and you come close to tipping 3k a second. Burning is a 328 to 708 – a 215% increase.

Now if you take my numbers vs Lokheits, by increasing my condition damage from 1200 to 1500, it helped my bleeding MORE than it helped my burning. When it comes to condition damage, increasing it helps (in order) these the most:
1) Confuse (.15 multiple intensity stacking – but this doesn’t hurt runners)
2) Bleeding (.o5 multiple intensity stacking)
3) Burning (.25 multiple duration stacking)
4) Poison (.1 multiple duration stacking)

Being able to reliably get burning and bleeding creates a solid condition build combo. Both conditions are strong DoTs that tick ignoring armor no matter what the target does until they remove the conditions. The ONLY reason to argue against a Warrior condition build is the fact that they have so many high damage physical moves that they have better DPS with power/crit.

Um, no. Back in the real world, it might be “not that hard to reapply them if someone removes them”… if you’re only looking to get a few stacks, which is still well below the limit where condition damage is better for bleed than for burn.

You’re trying to have it both ways. Yes, you can have a lot of stacks OR yes, you can get some going again after a cleanse, but you can’t have both because of the time it takes to reapply them in a situation that doesn’t involve the PvP golem not dodging, cleansing or hitting back.

Manticore Five.9867:

Um, no. Back in the real world

It’s fun how you keep refering to “real world” and “theorycraftingworld” without testing by yourself. And last time I checked there weren’t Practice Golems on WvW or sPvP that is where experience is gained to know how well do your conditions stick to opponents.

Of course there are a lot more viable options on direct damage than conditions for Warriors, but here you’re trying to dismiss some facts about a game mechanic that simply are true when you go play other players (and I’m not the only one saying it).

I don’t even know why we’re letting this discussion go so far when it isn’t as relevant here.

I (and other user) presented you facts, I’ve tested those facts against players multiple times, I know how bleeds work and I have experience on how maintainable or not they’re. If you still want to believe I’m talking about magical rainbows worlds where everything is perfect, ok, keep thinking that, worse for you next time someone specialized on it bleeds you out and you wonder what happened.

I’m leaving this discussion as it’s pointless at this point to convince you that other players test stuff in the “real world” with real situations and not with practice golems and their imagination, and I don’t want to hinder the main purpose of this thread with a discussion about a technicism.

Lokheit.7943:

If you still want to believe I’m talking about magical rainbows worlds where everything is perfect, ok, keep thinking that, worse for you next time someone specialized on it bleeds you out and you wonder what happened.

Given that I’ve a better chance to meet a unicorn than a warrior who hasn’t outgrown a bleed build by the time they hit 80, I’m not exactly quaking in my pants.

Manticore Five.9867:

Lokheit.7943:

If you still want to believe I’m talking about magical rainbows worlds where everything is perfect, ok, keep thinking that, worse for you next time someone specialized on it bleeds you out and you wonder what happened.

Given that I’ve a better chance to meet a unicorn than a warrior who hasn’t outgrown a bleed build by the time they hit 80, I’m not exactly quaking in my pants.

Fun part is unicorn is the name of a very common kind of bleeding build. Not sure if you were refering to unicorn because of that or because of the magical rainbows commentary, but if it was the later it’s a fun coincidence.

Lokheit and Drawing Guy are blowing smoke. Let’s look at it from a perspective that actually matters.

1200 condition dmg
Bleeding +60dmg/sec/stack
Burning +300dmg/sec

Burning gains 5x the dps from condition damage. .05… .25… the math works out!

But wait! what about stacks?

1 stack of burning = instant max dps from that condition
Bleeding has to be built up.

Damage done over time Bleeding-Burning assuming each row is a 1 second tick with an additional bleed application
1)60-300
2)180-600
3)360-900
4)600-1200
5)900-1500
6)1260-1800
7)1680-1900
8)2160-2200
9)2700-2500

So, taking into account the dps gained from condition damage stacking, it would take you 9 seconds, building up to 9 stacks, and the assumption that no bleeds run their duration or are cleansed, in order to eclipse the dps increase to burning.

But wait! There’s more!

Maybe adding in base damage will help?
Same format

1)102-628
2)306-1256
3)612-1884
4)1020-2512
5)1530-3140
6)2142-3768
7)2856-4396
8)3672-5024
9)4590-5652
10)5610-6280
11)6732-6908
12)7956-7536

With the same assumptions as listed above, you need 12 maintained stacks for 12 seconds before bleeding > burning. No thanks.

And all this discussion to defend a less competitive play-style.
You two are misrepresenting the numbers for the sake of looking smart. Stop misleading the community.

Should I spec points into strength for DW swords instead of arms since condition damage kind of suck for warriors in pvp?

Brutalistik.6473:

Should I spec points into strength for DW swords instead of arms since condition damage kind of suck for warriors in pvp?

The traits in the Arms tree, 20 and 25 pts in, are pretty solid. If you are going swords, the condition damage isn’t wasted and 10% chance to crit with swords is basically like adding 210 stat points to your toon when you attack with MH or OH sword. If you are running swords, I wouldn’t be afraid of the Arms tree. Just don’t run any cond dmg on your amulet or jewel.

@Veritas: Except that you can easily start with big bleed stacks (I don’t know of a single efective bleed build that puts the bleeding at a rate of 1 per second, if you’re going for it then obviously it won’t work…) and then keep them (the time those first big stacks take to end is enough for the following bleeds to reach the stable point, meaning you always keep a minimum of 5-7 bleeds (depending on build and profession) from second 1 and then go up until you reach the stable point, which basically destroys that table of yours as bleed won’t start at 1).

And speaking about misleading the community, show me that fantastic warrior burning that you can keep 12 seconds without your opponent standing on the same place… You know, so I can blow smoke from that fire too…

Anyway you’re right on that the discussion is pointless as conditions is a less competitive playstyle for Warriors and I was talking about bleeds vs. burning in general which isn’t this thread’s topic, so we better focus on the main topic here instead of technicisms.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just do both fire and bleed conditions? (Bow + Shield/Sword)

I made the table to illustrate the superiority of burning over bleeding in general. Nowhere did I advocate the use of conditions as a warrior. A bow condition build is worse than a sword condition build. I don’t want to play the what-if game when it comes to adrenaline management, flurry use, OH sword 4 & 5 landing, or any other form of bleed application available to warriors. And although the table is simple, it isn’t worthless or destroyed by flurry/OH sword. It shows players how poor bleeding is. Can the warrior outpace burning through bleeding? Absolutely. But the answer quickly becomes No if you miss flurry/OH sword attacks or those are cleansed. But now I’m what-ifing

The bottom line of what I hope people take away from my previous post is: burning trumps bleeding and running a condition warrior handicaps you.

Veritas.6071:

The bottom line of what I hope people take away from my previous post is: burning trumps bleeding and running a condition warrior handicaps you.

Amen to that cause all they have is nothing but bleeds. Be nice if we could get a trait enchanted flame sword or poison sword to add more conditions than just bleeds.

Veritas.6071:

running a condition warrior handicaps you.

While everything else was presented beautifully by you, here is where we disagree and where I have to emphasize that what I quoted is opinion;

Condition Warriors are viable.

Condition Builds in my experience is meh for a warrior especially if you are using rifle.

With rifle, you are only really stacking maybe 5-6 bleeds on a single person at one time, provided they don’t remove the condition. From a WvW and an SPvP perspective, you basically aren’t doing kitten and being completely useless.

With sword, you can probably stack 5-6 bleeds on 2-3 people and with your F1 you can get 10 more stacks of bleed on two other people. Now granted they don’t cure it it would do marginal to ok dps. But why when you can constantly hit 2k crits on 3 people with your axe every half second or so.

With Longbow, it might be somewhat of a viability in WvW if all you do is spam your F1, the burns would tick for pretty good damage, is a fairly large AoE.

Simple math, at 1,200 CD bleeds to 102.5 and burns do 628. You need approximately 6 stacks of bleed to do roughly the same DPS as 1 tick on the burn. And that needs to be built up over time while burns keep ticking for its full damage. On top of that burn applied by a warrior pulses so it is pretty much stacks intensity like a bleed does. In short, burn is way better than bleeds, by a long shot.

In short, condition builds aren’t terrible when focusing mostly single target (for bleeds) and using the longbow burns for AoE damage. You just gotta kill with your conditions before it is removed, because you may have to wait awhile before you can reapply them in bursts.

Killigraphy.3075:

Veritas.6071:

running a condition warrior handicaps you.

While everything else was presented beautifully by you, here is where we disagree and where I have to emphasize that what I quoted is opinion;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xouqOTmgSDs

Condition Warriors are viable.

Yeah condition is viable to a certain extent, but don’t expect to see many in Tpvp because not many players will stand in a ring a fire and they will cleanse off bleeds conditions.

Overall you’re holding your team back especially when a necro can do it better let alone a con thief.

There are just too many downsides to a Condition build.

Poor stat scaling, you can’t damage objects and you’re useless in group events due to Condition stacks severely limiting you.

I play a sword/horn + longbow support warrior. And what i find is if u dont use conditions ur not optimising the use of the Might boon. 1 stack of might gives 35 power AND 35 condition damage.

In my build i have 90% boon duration (40% armor, 30% straits, 20% food). That in combination with 2 superior sigil of battle and proper use of my own fire field (Longbow burst) i can stack myself constantly with 15-20 stack might. (and in Fractals i usually sit on 25 stack might). This gives met 875 power AND 875 condition damage. So relying on only power seems a bit odd when u get ‘free’ dps tru condition damage.

This gives met 3.2k armor, 22.5k Hp, 3.5k power, 77% crit chance and 1.6k condition damage. (PPT armor and weapons, PTC on trinkets).

So not using conditions in my eyes ur waisting DPS

Al of this is in a PvE perspective.

This isn’t about using Conditions; it is about stacking the Condition Damage stat through equipment. I also like to see you not use Bleed with the Rifle or Sword.

That’d be impossible.

Killigraphy.3075:

Veritas.6071:

running a condition warrior handicaps you.

While everything else was presented beautifully by you, here is where we disagree and where I have to emphasize that what I quoted is opinion;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xouqOTmgSDs

Condition Warriors are viable.

Linking a video from July 2012, with players who had no idea what conditions were, is not a valid argument.

xiv.7136:

Linking a video from July 2012, with players who had no idea what conditions were, is not a valid argument.

My point was that its viable, so yes it is a valid point. Nice try though.

Condition damage is beast… until level 40.
I have multiple files, but my warrior is becoming my main now.
I’ve played him Rifle/Bow from beginning until end-game, and I can tell you that the bow did far more damage until level 40. It’s burst is just ridiculous. You can take out entire waves of enemies and lead only the veteran standing to kite.

After level 40, and as I started getting better crit gear and critical hitting more often… the Rifle and power became much more important.
You can have a condition build, but it is insanely weak in comparison to other builds.

I am also a fan of Sword ’N Board, Shadowwaka, though I find that I benefit more from Power than I do condition damage. I build a tanky Strength/Defense/Tactics hybrid warrior, with Power being the primary attribute on my gear. It has a lot of group support and survivability, but it also has a very strong and consistent damage output with the Sword/Shield combo, even with hardly any condition damage other than what Might gives me.

Warriors are one of the best professions for raw Power builds. Easy access to Might and Fury combined with very few ways to reliably pump out damaging conditions means that warriors fall behind most professions in terms of condition pressure (as has been discussed to death in this thread), but outshine most professions in longevity and damage reliability.

In short, no, don’t focus on condition damage. Warriors are far too versatile to limit themselves with such a build, and the sword is still a nasty weapon even with low condition damage. You bring sword for the mobility and control. The bleeds are just icing on the cake.

Oglaf.1074:

This isn’t about using Conditions; it is about stacking the Condition Damage stat through equipment.

This.

Thanks for attempting to put the discussion back on track.

killahmayne.9518:

Condition Builds in my experience is meh for a warrior especially if you are using rifle.

With rifle, you are only really stacking maybe 5-6 bleeds on a single person at one time, provided they don’t remove the condition. From a WvW and an SPvP perspective, you basically aren’t doing kitten and being completely useless.

With sword, you can probably stack 5-6 bleeds on 2-3 people and with your F1 you can get 10 more stacks of bleed on two other people. Now granted they don’t cure it it would do marginal to ok dps. But why when you can constantly hit 2k crits on 3 people with your axe every half second or so.

With Longbow, it might be somewhat of a viability in WvW if all you do is spam your F1, the burns would tick for pretty good damage, is a fairly large AoE.

Simple math, at 1,200 CD bleeds to 102.5 and burns do 628. You need approximately 6 stacks of bleed to do roughly the same DPS as 1 tick on the burn. And that needs to be built up over time while burns keep ticking for its full damage. On top of that burn applied by a warrior pulses so it is pretty much stacks intensity like a bleed does. In short, burn is way better than bleeds, by a long shot.

In short, condition builds aren’t terrible when focusing mostly single target (for bleeds) and using the longbow burns for AoE damage. You just gotta kill with your conditions before it is removed, because you may have to wait awhile before you can reapply them in bursts.

I mostly agree? Gearing for condition damage isn’t going to make you a wvw god(/ess), but it has a lot of utility in WvW in the very least since you’re always taking camps with the buff up and seige bleeds and burns are affected by your CD stat. Completely kitten useless is the guy with the commander tag sitting in the JP.

I have a glass cannon shatter-build mesmer, and so when I got my warrior to 80 I wanted to do something tanky. Seeing as the build and gear set for WvW tanking wasn’t working, and with the spirit of adventure (i.e: it was cheap and I was bored) I went for a sword/sword/rifle condition spec (0/10/30/30/0)with carrion sigil and jewelry, undead runes.

There was a definite difference.

Why? Any skilled player would have a condition cleanse on his/her hotbar.

Let’s be honest with ourselves here. How many skilled players are in WvW at any given moment? On the one hand there are a lot of guilds that run with military precision. . . but when they can’t all get in, it’s diluted by the mob that tries to dps the SM gate down and stand in red arrow cart rings.

Anyway, I’m finding that most WvW players, in zergs and roamers, will eat the 12s of bleed from sword and rifle autoattacks. Most notice the crit numbers from my mesmer’s burst, and will run and heal. Few (by few, I mean: mostly guardians) will stop to cleanse the 6-8 stacks of bleeds. Most just run and dodge. (Thieves are especially funny. Their basic heal is a cleanse, but three times yesterday, they used the house to get away and when it was up they were sitting there downed and bandaging.) More often than that, the response to Flurry is HB or Dagger Storm (when I pop EP).

So in short, a CD spec will not replace burst. For now, since it’s generally unexpected, bleed stacking in WvW is somewhat effective and keeps me from getting kited to death.