Condi Damage vs Duration

[Dace.8173]

I've been reviewing my builds since the new Runes and Sigils came out and I've been wondering, is it better to have condi damage bonuses or condi duration bonuses? It seems to be the case that there is a fair amount of condi cleanse in the game but beforehand I noticed a lot of builds from other sites traited a lot of condi duration bonuses (which made sense in PvE but I have always questioned its worth in WvW). Is one more useful than the other?

[Stand The Wall.6987]

damage is usually better, unless youre up against a lot of builds with low cleanse (such as power burst one shots).

[Straegen.2938]

Damage is pretty much always better. Duration simply won't last on any number of targets. You want to spike as much condi with as many types of conditions as you can.

[Dace.8173]

Cool, thanks. I had suspected as much but a lot of the builds I'd see from online sites such as metabattle, they were using Runes and Sigils that had mostly duration on them. Also, I've seen a lot of folks recommend them when people ask for build advice. So I started to wonder about it since I tended to stray away from them.

[enkidu.5937]

There are short-duration / high damage per sec condis (e.g. burnig), long-duration / low damge per sec condis (e.g. bleeding), and CC / no damage condis (e.g. chill). So, the choice of pushing damage or duration depends on your build. Usually, for roaming it's damage, for dat freakin nasty burstses.

[babazhook.6805]

Wih the number of cleanses available it pretty rare to see conditions last to full durations. A lot depends on the base duration of the condition in question. As example I see no reason to extend a base bleed much past 7 seconds. If the base is right around there , do not bother with durations. If you go duration route it often better to focus on a lower duration condition then one that is high. This way you can get a wider variety of stacks on wherein all tick to the next cleanse. If you can get poison on for 6 seconds along with confusion and Torment for the same , this will generally do more damage then a confusion and torment at 4 and extending that poison to 10.

Having multile damaging conditions on , all ticking at the same time is the equivalent of a Critical hit in a power build. It multiplies the damage.

This of course also depends on how readily you can apply those same conditions.

[coro.3176]

It's not always about extending the duration of damaging conditions. It's also about ensuring your cover conditions last long enough that when your opponent cleanses, the damaging condi still remains. This obviously depends a lot on your class/build and what conditions you have access to.

On my engi, if I can turn a 3 second vuln + cripple into 5 or 6 seconds instead, that goes a long way to making sure my burns stick around when my opponent tries to cleanse. With smart condi application, you can (sometimes) make sure that your damaging condis stick around and the cover condi gets cleansed first.

.. other times your opponent just has infinite cleanse from traits + skills or gets another random burn stack from somewhere else and you're completely screwed again...