Guild Wars 2

Several issues with burning condition damage that I have noticed while playing an elem d/d configuration.

1:) The tool tip claims for the skill “Drakes Breath” that the duration should be 4.75 seconds for a total damage amount of 13,956, and should apply 4 stacks of burning. The ACTUAL duration time is exactly 18 seconds (timed by stopwatch), with 18 ticks. The stack size is NOT 4, but only 1, and seems to be limited to only 1 stack at a time regardless of what skill is being used (see below).

2:) When using one burning condition skill in conjunction with another burning condition skill, ie: “Drakes Breath” + “Ring of Fire”, I noticed that the 2 conditions DO NOT STACK for any additional damage. This is also true when attempting to add another stack of “Drakes Breath” condition damage to the 1st stack. (As the prolonged actual damage duration allows).

3:) The bleed condition damage skills all seem to work as the tooltip outlines, and correctly stacks bleed damage as applied, either with a single skill, or with multiple skills.

It looks as if the duration of “Drakes Breath”, and possibly the entire fire damage line for d/d was extended to compensate for a 1 stack limit of fire condition damage, however, this does not work for several reasons:

a: As previously mentioned, elems are unable to stack cross skill fire damage now, rendering the entire line of burning condition damage virtually useless, and

b: By increasing the duration of these skills and limiting the stack size, the CD’s on these skills are in effect, increased to the burn duration as well, as attempting to add another stack while the original damage is still in its cycle is pointless, AND

c: Extreme condition durations are next to useless in the first place as the chance that the target will either dispel the effect, or expire long before the duration has a chance to complete its cycle. This basically takes the total condition damage and whittles it down to a fraction of what its base damage is reported to be, on average.

d: If the durations were in fact extended to compensate for a 1 stack total limit, then the tool tips for ALL the fire damage skills are now incorrect.

As far as I know (this may be slightly incorrect) it works like this:

Drake’s Breath hits 4 times, if the duration of your Burns is approximately 5 seconds each, then you will stack up 20 seconds of burning over the 2 second cast time, leaving you with 18 seconds of burning.

Burning and every other duration stacking condition or boon has a limit on how many times it can be applied. For burning, this limit is 5. If your Drake’s Breath applies 4 stacks of Burning and you attempt to add more burning with another skill, it will apply one stack of burning (For Burning Speed, like 1 second) and then not have any effect to the burning stack past that until one of the 5 second burns expires.

I went and tested ingame on my Ele, and it does indeed seem to be functioning like I mentioned above. Drake’s Breath hit 4 times, and each time 3 seconds of burning was applied (0 condition duration). With 30% condition duration, each tick lasted 4 seconds, adding up to 16 seconds of burning.

Da Sonic.6521:

As far as I know (this may be slightly incorrect) it works like this:

Drake’s Breath hits 4 times, if the duration of your Burns is approximately 5 seconds each, then you will stack up 20 seconds of burning over the 2 second cast time, leaving you with 18 seconds of burning.

Burning and every other duration stacking condition or boon has a limit on how many times it can be applied. For burning, this limit is 5. If your Drake’s Breath applies 4 stacks of Burning and you attempt to add more burning with another skill, it will apply one stack of burning (For Burning Speed, like 1 second) and then not have any effect to the burning stack past that until one of the 5 second burns expires.

I went and tested ingame on my Ele, and it does indeed seem to be functioning like I mentioned above. Drake’s Breath hit 4 times, and each time 3 seconds of burning was applied (0 condition duration). With 30% condition duration, each tick lasted 4 seconds, adding up to 16 seconds of burning.

This isnt what the tool tip describes at all, where are you getting your information?

Even if this was correct, I should be seeing 4 stacks of burning, it only shows 1 on the target.

In fact, all it ever shows is 1. And in no way should those stacks inhibit other skills from stacking. This isnt how bleeds work, bleeds stack repeatedly, and the icon as well as the damage reflects this. Bleeds dont just extend the duration, they do more damage per tick. The skill “Churning Earth” has a tool tip of 6 stacks of bleeds. When I cast this, it shows 6 stacks of bleeds, and the duration is exactly the time the tool tip reads. If I use other skills on top of this, the stack size increases, and so does the damage per tick, NOT the duration. I have tested this repeatedly with my elem.

So if what you say is true, what sense does it make to have a 4-5 stack limit on a 18 second duration condition with a 5 second CD skill? You cant use any of your other skills with this now as if you say is correct, a player would have to wait the entire 18 seconds before applying another burn damage condition, even from another skill.

If all the above IS correct, they at least need to fix the tool tip to reflect this, as loopy as it sounds. And RIP my elem, Ill never play it again.

Radakill.3469:

Da Sonic.6521:

As far as I know (this may be slightly incorrect) it works like this:

Drake’s Breath hits 4 times, if the duration of your Burns is approximately 5 seconds each, then you will stack up 20 seconds of burning over the 2 second cast time, leaving you with 18 seconds of burning.

Burning and every other duration stacking condition or boon has a limit on how many times it can be applied. For burning, this limit is 5. If your Drake’s Breath applies 4 stacks of Burning and you attempt to add more burning with another skill, it will apply one stack of burning (For Burning Speed, like 1 second) and then not have any effect to the burning stack past that until one of the 5 second burns expires.

I went and tested ingame on my Ele, and it does indeed seem to be functioning like I mentioned above. Drake’s Breath hit 4 times, and each time 3 seconds of burning was applied (0 condition duration). With 30% condition duration, each tick lasted 4 seconds, adding up to 16 seconds of burning.

This isnt what the tool tip describes at all, where are you getting your information?

Even if this was correct, I should be seeing 4 stacks of burning, it only shows 1 on the target.

In fact, all it ever shows is 1. And in no way should those stacks inhibit other skills from stacking. This isnt how bleeds work, bleeds stack repeatedly, and the icon as well as the damage reflects this. Bleeds dont just extend the duration, they do more damage per tick. The skill “Churning Earth” has a tool tip of 6 stacks of bleeds. When I cast this, it shows 6 stacks of bleeds, and the duration is exactly the time the tool tip reads. If I use other skills on top of this, the stack size increases, and so does the damage per tick, NOT the duration. I have tested this repeatedly with my elem.

So if what you say is true, what sense does it make to have a 4-5 stack limit on a 18 second duration condition with a 5 second CD skill? You cant use any of your other skills with this now as if you say is correct, a player would have to wait the entire 18 seconds before applying another burn damage condition, even from another skill.

If all the above IS correct, they at least need to fix the tool tip to reflect this, as loopy as it sounds. And RIP my elem, Ill never play it again.

I’m getting my information directly from the tooltip, and from how it functions, and how it has functioned on every skill that applies burning for the last two years.

Not all conditions are exactly the same, and I’m sure you’ll find that if you hover over Burning, the description is “Deals damage every second; stacks duration.”
Bleeds are low damage with the ability to stack.
Poison is low damage with the ability to reduce healing.
Torment is low damage with the ability to deal more to moving targets.
Burning is high damage.
Confusion is medium damage, but requires skill use.

You’ll find each damaging condition has its tradeoffs, some are lower damage and as such take longer to start up (bleed, torment), one has a secondary effect (poison), and
one is readily applicable at full strength (burning).

A stack of burning only shows one “stack” because there simply isn’t enough room on the icon to describe how long each stack is. One stack of burning for 50 seconds functions exactly the same as two stacks of burning for 25 seconds each. While I do agree a counter showing the current active amount of burns stacked would be useful in determining if another application is possible would be helpful, it wouldn’t actually change the function of the skills at all.

Burning never has, and in the current state of affairs, never will stack in intensity. It is simply too strong of a condition to do so, given the frequency that classes like Elementalist, Guardian, and Engineer can apply them. Drake’s Breath alone would be able to maintain 2500 damage per second extremely easily if the condition stacked in intensity.

Here we go:

Not all conditions are exactly the same, and I’m sure you’ll find that if you hover over Burning, the description is "Deals damage every second; stacks duration.

A stack of burning only shows one “stack” because there simply isn’t enough room on the icon to describe how long each stack is.

If you watch the burning icon carefully, you will notice that there is a way to “time” stacks of conditions, its the little white line that “encircles” the icon, similar to a clock. As a stack runs out, the little stack number that is SUPPOSED to be in the lower right corner of the icon decrements.

Every other condition you mentioned above has this way of “timing” so you know aprox how long the condition is going to last… EXCEPT burning. The “time line” I guess you can call it IS there, but you have no idea at all how many stacks, if any, are actually getting to the target, as described by the tool tip. AND if you use multiple burning skills, as I mentioned above, there is no indication at all as to if they were applied or not, as the damage per tick remains the same, and there is NO stack counter, as is clearly depicted on the “Drakes Breath” burning icon.

Burning is high damage.

Uh.. no.

The ONLY thing high damage about burning is the tool tip number for the entire duration of the condition. In this game, the chances of the duration for any condition to run its course is very small. The longer you make the durations, the chances decrease incrementally. (whats really needed in this game is a DPS counter, this would show what really does the damage and what does not) The longer you run the duration, the smaller the damage per tick will be. So when the condition is cancelled, dispelled, transferred or simply dies along with the target, the actual damage it did is greatly reduced. AND since EVERY single character class in the game has at least 2-4 methods of dispelling or cancelling conditions, this makes condition damage pale in comparison to burst or direct damage methods. There are even several classes of characters such as Necro, Guardian and Mesmer that specialize in cancelling or flipping conditions not only on themselves, but allies and aoe as well.

What all this means is, the greater the duration of a condition, the greater chance that it will never see the end of its cycle, and its overall dps will be quite limited. The LESS duration, the more damage per tick, which means a greater chance of doing more damage before it can be nullified.

Burning never has, and in the current state of affairs, never will stack in intensity. It is simply too strong of a condition to do so, given the frequency that classes like Elementalist, Guardian, and Engineer can apply them. Drake’s Breath alone would be able to maintain 2500 damage per second extremely easily if the condition stacked in intensity.

….. Your kidding right? Have you ever played a zerk warrior? Or a thief?

I literally crank out 12K damage on my warrior in 2-3 seconds, and he only has exotic gear, no ascended yet. My thief does a 7-9K BS, thats just 1 second of damage. And my guys are not even in the same league as some players out there who do a hellofalot more. And lets not even get into how defenseable a warrior compared to a mage is.

2500 per second is nothing, and that can be dispelled. Try dispelling a 9K back stab.

Right now, burst and direct damage class characters just laugh at my elem, 800/tick for 18+ seconds?? LOL.. thats funny… let me kill you with 2 burst skills, then Ill just dispel that joke of a condition, and still have 12 seconds to spare.

Getting back on topic, the BUG about this is simply the tool tip information on the actual burning skills is not correctly depicted, if duration is the intended method of “total damage”. The burning icon SHOULD be showing some sort of duration information so that it reflects the actual tool tip information and the caster can have an idea of skill preparation and casting order to maximize their effect.

The burning icon SHOULD be showing some sort of duration information

When u hover yer mouse cursor over the Burning icon on the foe, it shows a tiny window with some info including the remaining burning duration.

Sidenote; I noticed a bug in the Burning info in the Skill description.
The mentioned total dmg is duration rounded down to whole seconds.
Unless, the game can only apply whole seconds of Burning.
But if so, that would mean for example increasing a 1sec burn to 1.5 secs would be pointless since only 1sec would be applied then.

Burning doesnt stack in intensity like other conditions. It only stacks in duration.

And yes it only applies burning once per second, rounding down. 2.99 seconds is the same as 2 seconds.

When u hover yer mouse cursor over the Burning icon on the foe, it shows a tiny window with some info including the remaining burning duration.

Yes, this is true but have you noticed that this information is bugged as well?

At the start of the burn (using Drakes Breath) the duration shows about 10 seconds, this counts down until the icon is no longer “ticking” and reaches zero, or to put another way, the time line around the icon has disappeared. The condition icon remains however, and continues for about another 8 seconds.

Even if it was working properly, I dont know about you, but I dont want to have to fight with my cursor hovering over an icon just to see what should be visible at a glance.

This is exactly what Im on about, even besides having duration stacking (terrible idea), the current system does not show the correct information about what is going on with your applied conditions.

Malganis.7468:

Burning doesnt stack in intensity like other conditions. It only stacks in duration.

And yes it only applies burning once per second, rounding down. 2.99 seconds is the same as 2 seconds.

Thats already been covered in my original post and throughout the thread, however, it does bring up an interesting point that our friends at ArenaNet seem to think that just by increasing the duration of a condition your automatically increasing the damage as well. In most situations, this is TOTALLY incorrect. In fact, if you work the numbers, just increasing duration to justify damage actually, again, in most situations, DECREASES the overall tool tip damage.

There comes a point when just repeatedly extending durations is totally mute, chances are you will not see the end of even the shorter duration conditions let alone the ones that last 20+ seconds, and then only in rare situations. So just adding on time is ridiculous.

Thats getting abit off topic, the real point to the thread is there are disparities between what is shown on the skill tool tips and what is (or more accurately, what isnt) shown on the damage icon.