Boons and conditions
Boons are beneficial effects; conditions are harmful effects. Both can affect you, allies, and enemies. Understanding how they stack and are removed helps you decide what to maintain and what to cleanse.
✨ What are boons and conditions?
✨ Boons: beneficial effects
- Granted by skills, traits, and equipment
- Improve combat effectiveness and survival
- Enemies can remove them or corrupt them into conditions
- Shown on the top row of effect icons, to the right of the health orb at the bottom of the screen
🔴 Conditions: harmful effects
- Cause damage, restrict movement, or interfere with actions
- Damaging conditions ignore Toughness
- Can be cleansed or transferred
- Shown on the bottom row of effect icons, to the right of the health orb
A support’s role: maintaining party boons and removing harmful conditions are major jobs for support builds. These become more important in demanding content.
📊 Stacking: duration and intensity
Reapplying the same boon or condition stacks it in one of two ways.
Duration stacking
Reapplying an effect adds to its duration. More applications usually do not make it stronger; they make it last longer, up to any duration cap.
Condition examples: Control conditions such as Crippled, Chilled, and Weakness: up to 10 seconds; Fear and Taunt: 5 seconds
Intensity stacking
More stacks increase the effect. Each stack has its own duration, and effects have a maximum stack count. More stacks of a damaging condition increase damage per second.
Condition examples: Damaging conditions such as Bleeding and Burning: up to 1,500 stacks; Vulnerability: 25
| Effect | Stacking | Maximum | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Most boons | Duration | 30 seconds; Swiftness: 60 seconds | Aegis and Regeneration have no duration cap, but do limit the number of stored applications |
| Might, Stability | Intensity | 25 stacks | At level 80, 25 Might stacks give +750 Power and +750 Condition Damage |
| Damaging conditions, such as Bleeding and Burning | Intensity | 1,500 stacks in all modes | Damage from each stack contributes |
| Control conditions, such as Crippled and Chilled | Duration | 10 seconds; Fear and Taunt: 5 seconds | - |
| Vulnerability | Intensity | 25 stacks in all modes | 25 stacks increase damage taken by 25% |
🔁 Pulses: repeated applications
Boons and conditions may be applied once for a long duration, or repeatedly in shorter pulses.
One application
The skill applies the effect once for the listed duration. For example, “5 seconds of Fury” adds one 5-second application. A boon removal can clear it completely.
Pulsing applications
A pulse reapplies an effect at regular intervals. Standing in a Might-granting field, for example, gives you Might with each pulse. If Might is stripped, all current stacks disappear, but the next pulse can grant it again while the field remains active and you are in range.
Boons: area skills such as symbols, banners, and wells can pulse boons. Repeated applications from supports help maintain uptime.
Conditions: damaging areas can repeatedly apply Bleeding or Burning. Remaining inside lets further pulses add stacks.
✨ Common boons at a glance
These are boons you will see frequently. For detailed values and the full list, see Reference → Boons.
⚔️ Removing and corrupting boons
You can remove enemy boons or turn them into conditions. Enemies can do the same to yours. These tools are especially useful for breaking defenses in PvP and WvW.
🔵 Boon removal (strip)
Removes boons from an enemy without turning them into another effect. The number removed depends on the skill.
🟣 Boon corruption
Removes a boon and replaces it with its corresponding condition. Protection, for example, becomes Vulnerability. Necromancer has many skills with this function.
🟠 Watch your Stability
Although Stability stacks in intensity, most boon removal or corruption skills remove all its stacks at once. Even a large stack can disappear in one removal.
Cover boons: protecting important effects
Ordinary boon removal generally targets the most recently applied or refreshed boon. Adding other boons after an important one can make them get removed first. Corruption chooses randomly, while boon stealing follows skill-specific priorities.
🧹 Removing, transferring, and converting conditions
🧹 Cleanse
General cleansing removes the most recently applied conditions first. Removing one condition type clears all its stacks. Skills that name a specific condition follow their tooltip instead.
🔄 Transfer
Moves conditions from you to an enemy. Necromancer’s Plague Signet, for example, sends your own conditions to a foe when activated. Check the tooltip for the source and number of conditions transferred.
🔵 Convert
Removes conditions from you or allies while turning them into boons. Guardian’s Contemplation of Purity, for example, converts your own conditions. Targets and conversion counts vary by skill.
Damaging conditions become more dangerous as stacks build.
Under the same conditions, each stack adds damage, but damage per stack depends on the enemy’s stats and the condition type. Do not dismiss a condition just because it has one stack. When several types are present, cover conditions can make a general cleanse remove a less dangerous effect first. If health is dropping rapidly, identify and remove the dangerous conditions.
What Resistance covers: it temporarily ignores nondamaging conditions such as Fear, Immobile, and Chilled. It does not remove them. Damaging conditions such as Bleeding, Burning, and Poison still apply their damage and secondary effects. Use Resolution to reduce condition damage or cleanse the conditions.
🎯 Practical tips
- Watch your effect icons. Flashing means an effect will expire within 5 seconds.
- Fight where the party is gathered. Boon and healing ranges vary by skill. Unless your role requires you elsewhere, stay where support skills can reach you.
- Might caps at 25 stacks. If the party lacks Might, supplement it with support skills or a fire field plus blast finisher. A single build can also maintain 25 stacks.
- Duration-stacking boons have caps. Extra Fury duration is wasted when you already have 30 seconds. Time reapplications to maintain uptime.
- Remove dangerous conditions promptly. Confusion deals extra damage when you use skills. Respond with cleansing or healing instead of simply stopping all skill use, and watch for other damaging conditions too.
- Maintaining 25 Vulnerability stacks increases the whole party’s damage. Supports and damage dealers can contribute together.
🫧 What is a boon ball?
A boon ball is a group that moves close together to share boons and healing. Support skills have range and target limits, and many prioritize the same party or subgroup. Group composition and coordinated movement therefore matter.
Maintain several kinds of support together. Sharing offensive boons, defensive boons, healing, and cleansing lets players cover one another’s gaps. A boon ball maintains a range of support effects across the group.
- PvE (raids and fractals): usually stack with the party beside or behind the boss. Maintain Might, Quickness, and Alacrity, and follow assignments or spread mechanics when required. In encounters that remove boons at the start, apply them again after entering combat.
- Large WvW battles: move with the squad to receive defensive boons such as Stability, Protection, and Resistance. Assign boon, healing, and cleansing roles within subgroups. The number and mix of supports depend on the squad’s builds.
→ Staying close to support helps you survive.