Guild Wars 2

Okay guys. I have done some more math to include skill rotations. This required me to use the skill’s effective damage and only calculate the DPS once I knew how long the skill rotation would take. So far, I have only calculated short bow and longbow numbers.

First up is short bow. I included the Sharpened Edges trait in the calculation. I used 108 (2 bleed ticks) * 66% application * 51% critical chance for an effective damage of 36.353 per shot. For poison volley, I assumed that only 3 of the 5 shots would land on the target. This would allow the addition of Sharpened Edges 3 times and a Poison duration of 7 seconds while calculating the effective damage.

SHORT BOW SKILLS
Crossfire – 717.335 effective damage
Poison Volley – 1,328.295 effective damage

SHORT BOW ROTATION
Crossfire (x14), Poison Volley (x1)
Total Delay – 8.113 seconds
Effective Damage – 11,370.988
DPS – 1,401.576

Now for the longbow. I increased the damage of long range shot to assume that you would always have the 10% vulnerability from rapid fire. I also increased the damage of rapid fire to include the additional 1% vulnerability from each consecutive shot. I included the Sharpened Edges trait too.

LONGBOW SKILLS
Long Range Shot (1000+) – 1,665.723 effective damage
Long Range Shot (500+) – 1,213.120 effective damage
Long Range Shot (0) – 941.559 effective damage
Rapid Fire – 6,813.120 effective damage

LONGBOW ROTATION
Long Range Shot (x8), Rapid Fire (x1)
Total Delay – 12.500 seconds

Effective Damage (1000+) – 20,138.906
DPS (1000+) – 1,611.112

Effective Damage (500+) – 16,518.083
DPS (500+) – 1,321.447

Effective Damage (0) – 14,345.589
DPS (0) – 1,147.647

Please feel free to multiply the final numbers by 1.10 if you’d like to include the 5% vulnerability from Remorseless and the 5% from Eagle Eye.

jcbroe.4329:

@Everybody;

Here is another way of looking at it:

These are the damage stats we can invest into;

Power
Precision
Critical Damage
Condition Damage
Condition Duration

When it comes to maximizing DPS, direct damage needs Power, Precision, and Critical Damage. For Damage Over Time, no additional stat investment is required.

For maximizing the DPS of condition damage, you need; Condition Damage. For Damage Over Time, you need an additional investment of Condition Duration.

Based on investment values alone, condition damage is the better investment because it requires less stat investment to be effective.

However, as previously pointed out, this doesn’t take into consideration the requirements and hard counters to either of the types of damage.

Also, I forget the users name, but from the spvp forums, there was an argument of why shorter condition were better than long lasting conditions. Basically, the point was made that being able to reapply 2 second bleeds over and over is better than being about to apply them on a long duration due to the nature of condition removal in this game.

Because condition removal in the game is very tied to cooldowns, whether it be passive or active, the chances of having your damage removed is actually lower for low duration conditions than high ones. Take for example, ranger Torch. Torch 4 can apply a long duration burn, which, for most players, will be cleansed almost immediately if they get hit by it, making the skill do almost no damage unless the person lacks the removal to get rid of it.

However, skills like Bonfire and Flame Trap reapply 1s/2s burns over and over, and even though overall the damage over time is lower, the DPS is safer because the chance that a 1s or 2s long condition is going to be removed is much lower than a 10 second long condition.

That’s just an interesting perspective I found on the actual benefits of condition duration.

Direct damage does not need critical damage, and critical chance is less important then condition duration is. Even if you only have 2200 power, 20% critical chance, and 15% critical damage, you still have a viable direct damage build. Condition damage requires more attention to build choices. Because of the hard counters to condition duration (Lemongrass Poultry Soup, Rune of Melandru, Rune of Hoelbrak, and Rune of the Sunless), you need more then +40% condition duration in a condition damage build, in the current meta. Next to this, you also need to be aware of all the condition damage types, as the more you have, the more damage you will deal. Burn, poison, and 10 stacks of bleed, deals a lot more damage then just 10 stacks of bleed alone. And because of this, you also rely more on multiple skills, meaning you’ll want some form of skill recharge reduction, so you can stack your conditions faster. Or in other words; auto-attacking with a direct damage build, is more powerful then auto-attacking with a condition damage build. Condition damage only becomes more powerful, when you can continuously keep conditions on a target.

Enjoy it while we can:

“JonathanSharp

Game Design Lead

Next

Further down the Road

•We’re also looking to make conditions scale better in PvE/WvW leveling so that they’re more viable at different junctures in the level scale. "

Translation: Nerf incoming.

Arguably, ranger condy builds
Need 2 stats:

Condi/precision or condi/healing

dont forget to say that condition dmg ignores your enemys toughness/armor.

Wait, what’s the point of all of this again?

To explain why investing in Condition Damage could be viewed as having a more efficient stat investment per maximizing damage dealt. See, you can do more direct damage than condition damage if enough stats are allocated, but by allocating the same amount towards Condition Damage, you would also be able to invest into other offensive or defensive options that conditions benefit from, such as precision for more condition procs using traits and sigils, or toughness for incoming damage reduction, or even power for a dual output of conditions and direct damage.

In less words: By investing in Condition Damage, you are left with more points leftover to be able to allocate after optimizing the desired damage output than you are when investing in direct damage.

Wait, are you saying conditions are better to invest in as a ranger than direct damage?

No. Not at all. There are many situations in which conditions are not optimal. This is either created by the limitation of the condition cap; or the maximum stack of certain conditions that can be applied to a target, or just in general, needing to do more damage than what can be accomplished through conditions, or the target being a structure/object.

Wait, so if direct damage is stronger, why isn’t it better?

Simply put, doing the most damage possible isn’t everything. Particularly, against other players, toughness, vitality, and healing power are all important tools for the quest to be the most dominant player on the battlefield, and with condition damage, you have more opportunity to build defensively and offensively at the same time than you do with direct damage. Particularly, through condition damage, you an attain the most offensive and defensive at the same time build that you can possibly create.

So, where do pets fit into all of this?

Throughout all of this, pets are a static element. The same pet can be used by either somebody built for direct damage or somebody built for condition damage, so really the pet doesn’t factor much into the discussion. HOWEVER, players building for condition damage can also allocate stats towards beastmastery, which will increase the damage and durability of the pets in combat, which isn’t taking away from any of the damage done by the ranger player.

With everything factored in, rangers… no, not just rangers…. ANY class that has a viable source of condition output has more build options when using conditions as a primary source of damage.

tl;dr: Condition Damage requires less stat investment to reach its damage potential than building for direct damage, which is a huge bonus and deciding factor when it comes to choosing what to build for, since based on stat investment alone, investing in Condition Damage is more efficient per point invested, leaving more points to be invested elsewhere.

So, I’m sure many of you out there are already knowledgeable about your class; the Ranger. However, for those that aren’t, let’s review a commonality that never really seems to see much discussion:

Why are so many builds that are considered effective for the Ranger condition based?

Well, there are many parts to this question, as it isn’t an immediately easy answer. First off, weapon availability. By this I mean, what weapons are condition heavy, and which weapons lean towards direct damage.

Greatsword – Direct
Longbow – Direct
Shortbow – Condition
Sword – Direct
Axe – Condition
Offhand Axe – Direct
Dagger – Condition
Torch – Condition
Warhorn – Direct

Wait, that’s about an even amount of options. Doesn’t that mean that Rangers performance should be equal for both options?

Well, unfortunately, that’s not necessarily the case. Which brings us to the next point:

Skill Coefficients. For a reference point, go to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_ranger_skills and click on a skill, any skill you want. There will be a base damage value, and then next to it, in parenthesis, the decimal number is your skill coefficient. Take a look through some of these skill coefficients, and you will notice a trend; they are all pretty terrible.
Why does this matter?

Well, they are directly used in the damage formula for the game. Lower skill coefficients mean lower damage, and Ranger weapons compete for the title of lowest skill coefficients in the game.

Well, what about Condition Damage?

Ah, fortunately, Condition Damage is not tied in any way to skill coefficients. Condition damage has it’s own base values and scaling, which is standard for every class in the game. Let’s take an arbitrary example:

Swing your sword, and you hit for 500 damage.
Land a splitblade, which puts 5 bleeds on your opponent. With a similar/same amount of point investment, you do 100 damage per bleed stack per second, so 500 damage per second, plus the damage of landing all 5 splitblades, which is about 125 damage in this scenario, for a total of 625 damage in the same second that the direct damage occurred.

Why isn’t the direct damage doing more in the scenario?

Glad you asked. Direct damage isn’t doing more, because precision hasn’t been factored in, and neither has critical damage. See, Condition Damage is only reliant on itself for increasing Damage Per Second (condition duration increased Damage Over Time). Direct damage, however, can be bolstered through scoring critical hits. The result is that Direct Damage has a higher damage potential than Condition Damage, at the cost of requiring a larger stat investment that could otherwise be allocated elsewhere.

I know many people will say know, don’t like this change, then don’t play. But,

I am kind of player, who likes to play 1 hour in total, half minimized game, playing only pve solo, grinding daily achives and monthly achives and getting karma. I used karma to convert it to gold and then buy gems for player slot upgrade and bank tab upgrade. So, reducing karma daily from 4500 to 600 and monthly from 45k to 6k, which i was specially doing for getting jugs, killed interest in game.

Someone will say, “it is online game, so you are supposed to play it in groups, WvW, sPvP or dungeons.” No, I am not! I was not starting game because of karma jugs but, I understand that i like leveling characters and getting good gear with karma. My aim was to do dailies and log out. sometimes play dungeons. I came from another online game, because i did not like changes, but after 2 month playing get such a nerf, sorry the most important aim what i had, i lost it.

Anet gave me chance to get what i wanted by dailies, now they took it. No meaning in leveling, which i like in games.

With this post i wanted to say, if i think so, someone will be also thinking like me. If Anet changes this mistake or give other interesting things, I will be interested. Other than that, I dont have any interest in game.

P.S. Sorry for bad English, not native speaker.

Nice to read all this great news!

JonathanSharp.7094:

Further down the Road

• We’re also looking to make conditions scale better in PvE/WvW leveling so that they’re more viable at different junctures in the level scale.

What about the announcement from Dec / Jan that there are plans to make condition damage competitive with direct damage, especially in regards to the ability to take down structures? Is this still planned?

Lol, well I’ll throw my 2 cents in here, but I highly doubt the devs will get through the walls of text above xD

I main a conditionmancer in PvE, and I’d love to be able to take her into dungeons….The 25 stacking limit isn’t an issue for me, more than my damage output being incredibly inferior to other classes. If I’ve invested so much into an offensive stat, I would at least like to see a mob drop in around the same amount of time as a zerker necro.

I don’t want to switch to a power necro just to be effective, I enjoy the conditionmancer playstyle too much, and have invested insane amounts of time and gold into gearing my necro. We give up so much going full condition, it’d be nice if we could also be thought of once in a while instead of just making power build more and more superior.

Secondly, because I “can’t” run my necro in dungeons, I’ve resorted to running a guardian, which is fine, I love guardian to bits as well. If I could have one thing though, it’d be a faster Hammer attack speed. Why can’t it be along the same lines as the Warrior hammer, and just reduce the duration of the protection from the third hit accordingly?

I’m pretty happy to read a lot of this. Some improvements to things that have been asked about repeatedly in the forums shows that while the devs might not comment on every post, they’re certainly reading them.

Happy to see PvE/PvP skill splitting. Players and monsters are so vastly different that I think it’s necessary. I’m hoping to see some impressive changes to turrets/summons/minions to make them more viable in PvE but not OP in PvP. Glad to see PvE is getting some love.

And QoL improvements are always a plus. Only thing I didn’t see on here is an option to choose what appears on the right hand side of the UI. Sometimes mine is clogged by things I don’t care to track.

Pet scaling would be an awesome request for them to look at. In other titles that have heavy pet classes the pets had skills they would use without them being manually pressed, they also took the stats from the master which was awesome in survival issues, and had immunity to AOE damage to a high percentage so they couldn’t be instakilled by a single AOE spell which made them useless in every game.

I think they need to take that more seriously in their balancing act definitely something to look into!

I’m not sure how relevant this video is to the newest patch, but it was posted 3 months ago and it what I used as a starting guide in order to level my guardian to 60. I ended up crafting the rest of my 20 levels up to level 80.

Guardian Leveling Guide

As for leveling, you’ll be using power (mighty prefix) starting out. Around level 21+ is when you’ll start seeing dual prefix traits. Upkeep your gear (including trinkets) every 5 or 10 levels via TP. I did mine every 10 to save up on coin.

The way I did my storyline and leveling was to complete all the heart quests + uncover map to 100% completion THEN do the storyline until it “ports” you into another leveling zone. If you’re finding trouble in having the heart quests become red, you can substitute some storyline questing just to level match you for the next heart quest you’re heading into. After you finish up and uncover your first starting race map (should be around lvl 14+), I would recommend choosing another starting race area to complete, before going into the level 15-25 zone over. This will allow you to have some padding into the next area and you won’t feel as squishy.

I chose GS for leveling as it’s great for AoE pulling mobs to finish heart quest faster. My offhand was staff for +might stacks and a +swiftness circle that you can give to allies or to yourself to get around faster on the map.

As for crafting you can craft at anytime, but I would advise to stick it out until you’re around lvl 40. If you stick it out to lvl 50, you can take up cooking to 400 – which is by far the cheapest craft profession to level in the game. If you do this path and end up being a lvl 60, you can do a nice Dynamic Event chain in Fireheart Rise which can take you all the way to lvl 70 if so choose, and skip heart questing/storyline all together. From lvl 70 onward, you can either choose to craft or play catchup with your storyline for easy XP and then grind out the last few levels you have left to lvl 80. The link below is what I used for any sort of crafting by initial starting cost and current TP prices:

GW2 Crafts

Hope my post helps you in someway.
— Happy questing.

Hello GaileGray.9587,
I post on behalf on my friend whom has his account blocked since the 11th, he opened the ticket 120911-009121 but had no answer for 5 days now.
Please help him as he encounter the error 122 (which apparently happens also to people having bought the game on the official wesbite), but he pre-orderer, activated his key properly, played since the beta-test, did the email authentification weeks ago, have now a lvl 43 character.. and the support checked his key before the game’s release, to merge his GW and GW2 accounts.
Thanks.