condition damage

Condition damage is a stat that increases the damage dealt by several conditions. Unfortunately, I think most people are not fully aware of how much it actually does. So, I'm going to try to illustrate just how effective condition damage is, and how much bang you get for your buck. If the calculations and speculations don't interest you, skip to the bottom for my conclusion.

Here are the raw figures:

Bleeding:
base damage: 42.5 per stack, 1062.5 with max stacks
how much you gain per 1 point in CD: 0.05

Burning:
base damage: 328
how much you gain per 1 point in CD: 0.25

Poison:
base damage: 84
how much you gain per 1 point in CD: 0.10

Confusion:
base damage: 130, 3250 with max stacks
how much you gain per 1 point in CD: 0.15



All that doesn't tell you very much without doing a bunch of extra calculations, sooo I'll do them for you! Firstly, note that the relative increase to your damage is approximately 0.12% per point in condition damage, meaning that you need about 850 CD just to double your base damage. It's significantly worse for Burning though - you need 1312 to reach double.
Here's how much damage you'll get from your conditions if you choose certain specs:

300 condition damage (no condition damage gear or food at all; just 30 points in the appropriate trait):
Bleeding will deal 57.5 per stack, instead of the base 42.5
Burning will deal 403, instead of the base 328
Poison will deal 114, instead of the base 84
Confusion will deal 175 per stack, instead of the base 130
That's an increase of approximately 1/3.

224 condition damage (condition damage as a minor stat on your armour e.g. from Rampager's gear):
...adds about 1/4 to your base damage.

315 condition damage (condition damage as a major stat on your armour i.e. Carrion or Rabid gear):
...adds just over 1/3.

...skipping ahead through all the possibilities...
3171 condition damage (ascended gear, food, a bunch of allies buffing you... I think this is at least close to the max possible):
Bleeding will deal 201 per stack - 5025 with max stacks
Burning will deal 1101
Poison will deal 401
Confusion will deal 606 per stack - 15150 with max stacks

Realistically, nobody is going to even come close to this much condition damage in a real combat situation. A more sensible figure, for a character aiming to maximise condition damage in a dungeon, popping expensive food and whilst surrounded by allies granting Might would be 2000 condition damage.
Bleeding will deal 143 per stack - 3563 with max stacks
Burning will deal 828
Poison will deal 284
Confusion will deal 430 per stack - 10750 with max stacks

That's fairly good DPS, when combined with the damage from your regular attacks and anything else you can offer the team. The downside is that putting all those points into condition damage will detract hugely from everything else you can do.


Notes

• All of this assumes that you're level 80 - almost all of the base damage is dependent on your level, but condition damage is scaled down in low areas too, so it doesn't really matter.
  
• Except for Confusion, every condition inflicts its damage once per second. Confusion triggers every single time your target uses a skill (including attacks); in GW1 terms it's a single target Spiteful Spirit. This makes it very effective against enemies that attack fast or spam skills. Unfortunately, none of those exist in PvE. However...
  
• ...in SPvP, Confusion deals half as much damage, making it a lot less effective than it would otherwise be. This leaves WvWvW as the only place where Confusion is really worthwhile.
  
• If you have the necro trait Terror, Fear also deals condition damage. It's a bit more than Burning, but I haven't bothered doing any calculations for it because it has a much higher opportunity cost than other conditions.

tl;dr?
Condition damage does give a reasonable boost to conditions that aren't Burning, but since Poison isn't stackable, and Confusion is disadvantaged outside of WvW, this only leaves Bleeding as an important damaging condition. Since no profession can match the bleeding output of a necromancer, power and critical damage are much more effective stats to focus on.

This is interesting to read thanks for making it(assuming you did of course). If you ever wanted to do some followup you could try to see where extended condition duration comes into play vs more condition damage for increasing bleed damage(for necros obviously).

IE - Do you go 3 sets of 2 condition duration extenders on runes Krait/Afflicted/Lyssa/Mad King or do you use Giver's weapons or do you use something with more condition damage for the runes or weapons. Perhaps it can be inferred what would be optimal with a few quick calculations based on this but I'm really lazy.

thank you very much - I did indeed make this myself, although I took data from the official wiki

The effectiveness of condition duration is a lot more complicated to calculate for a couple of reasons:
1. your allies may or may not be adding enough stacks of bleeding to exceed the cap
2. most non-boss foes are gonna die way before their bleeds expire - Blood is Power is a great example of a bleed that lasts way longer than it needs to, although it's awesome on anything with high enough health to take damage from the full duration
3. there are relatively few good sources of condition duration boost e.g. you can only get it from a few runes, and not at all from armour or trinkets

Personally I use 5 Superior Runes of the Krait and a Crest of the Rabid, with a 5th krait rune on my aqua breather.
Honestly, if I magically received additional condition duration (I already have +50% when I pop food), I'd be more excited about increasing chill, cripple and fear than bleeding!