Guild Wars 2

I’ve been wondering for a while now who has the highest possible burst in the game, and how high exactly could that burst go under ideal conditions. After a brief youtube comment section debate I decided to do the math and find out.

Rules:
- The burst must take less than one second to complete, starting from first tick of damage done.
- The target is an afk glass cannon with 1804 armor, 20k health and the magical ability to heal back to one health should it fall below zero.
- RNG magically gives the burst the best possible results – every % chance to do something that would increase the burst will happen, and every skill scores the highest possible weapon strength value. We are looking for the theoretical limit, so how likely it is to happen is completely irrelevant.

So far, I’ve done the tests on one thief build and one elementalist build, though I did use three different burst rotations for the ele. If you have a build you think could complete, post it below and we’ll see how far it goes.

(I had to split the elementalist bursts into two posts due to the size limitations. Pun may or may not be intented )

EDIT: I figured an easy to read high scores list would be handy.

1. Elementalists – 94k damage. (Build could be improved?)
2. Thief – 82k damage.

Thief:

Rotation 1:
Total damage ~ 55 000

Rotation 2:
Total damage: ~ 82 000

Elementalist

Rotation 1:
Total damage: ~ 92 000

Rotation 2:
Total damage: ~ 88 000

Rotation 3:
Total damage: ~ 94 000

Reserved for future use.

Reserved for future use.

So, I think we can conclude that elementalists are the kings and queens of burst, at least for the time being.

As a side note, I made a quick little Java thing to do the calculations for me and spit out the results in a nice forum ready format. It’s not the prettiest code out there, but if someone wants the source code or an exacutable jar just send me a message and I’ll beam it over to you.

I’m leaving for a short trip today, and if all goes as planned I should be back next Wednesday. If you have any questions you better ask them quick or be prepared to wait a few days

I’ve never seen anything burst harder than a 6/6/0/0/2 revealed training Dagger thief.

You can land steal, backstab, dual strike, wild strike, sigil of air, and sigil of fire all in 1 second. If quickness pops early enough you might be able to get a third attack in from the auto attack chain.

@OP: I agree that eles have the biggest burst in the game. That said, I think you should also add in a gc mesmer build and test that.

Burst rotation
Cloak_and_Dagger – Coefficient: 1.624, Might: 0, Vulnerability: 3, Crit: true
Mug – Coefficient: 1.09, Might: 0, Vulnerability: 0, Crit: false
Backstab – Coefficient: 2.405, Might: 0, Vulnerability: 0, Crit: true
Sigil_of_Hydromancy – Coefficient: 0.25, Might: 0, Vulnerability: 0, Crit: true

shouldn’t the rotation include a HS after the BS to take advantage of the 200 power from revealed training.

also the food used, would bowl of seaweed salad give better results with a flat 10% damage increase or is 100 power/ 70 ferocity better?

Unless they changed it, you can actually get the revealed training to work on backstab since it has a 1/2 second animation. If you start the backstab, then steal (with mug), the backstab will land after you are revealed, allowing for it to be affected by the trait.

Highest burst would be a wall and a thief with fiery totally legit greatsword.

you should google for the video on how a warrior takes down the entire wvw camp, elites and all, within a 3-5 second sequence.

that’s what i call burst.

the highest i have seen was a warrior 100 blades. ( yes i know it ran outside of the time limit that you stated.)

this was long time ago so alot of mechanics have changed but just for fun.

116k hundred blades. EVERYTHING was alligned. 25 might 25 vuln etc.

i may have to see if i can find the screenshot for it.

..And I’m back. Time to reanimate this thread!

Brando.1374:

shouldn’t the rotation include a HS after the BS to take advantage of the 200 power from revealed training.

I couldn’t find any data on thief aftercast delays, so I was hesitant to go too close to that one second mark in case I accidentally went over it. On top of that, the original time limit was ½ a second, and while I did bumb it up to one second later on, I still had the metality that the burst must be near instantaneous.

That being said, I probably should have squeezed in that additional heartseeker – backstab takes 1/4 of a second and heartseeker takes 3/4 of a second, so with quickness it would probably work.

Note that backstab should already benefit from Revealed Training since we reveal ourselves with Mug during the animation.

(Well, that’s how it should work. I messed up and accidentally gave the thief a permanent Revealed Training instead – I’ll have to fix that and re-do the calculations)

Shockwave.1230:

You can land steal, backstab, dual strike, wild strike, sigil of air, and sigil of fire all in 1 second.

I’d love some numbers on how long thief skills actually take. I know there are some aftercast delays in the game, but they aren’t documented anywhere for the most part, which makes theorycrafting with strict time limits a bit difficult. Still, if we can squeeze in additional hits, we should

As for the sigils, sigils of air and fire can’t crit, so I think the +10% damage sigils work better in our ideal case scenario. Aren’t there some internal cooldowns that prevent both triggering like that as well?

Brando.1374:

also the food used, would bowl of seaweed salad give better results with a flat 10% damage increase or is 100 power/ 70 ferocity better?

Good point, I hadn’t even realized seaweed salad exists. Does anyone know which is better, or should I just use both and see which works better?

style.6173:

@OP: I agree that eles have the biggest burst in the game. That said, I think you should also add in a gc mesmer build and test that.

How would a gc mesmer burst work? I’ve never been able to squeeze decent numbers out of them, though I’m not a mesmer expert so it’s very likely I was doing it wrong. In my experience mesmers do great sustained damage with phantasms, but little front loaded burst.

(EDIT: I decided mesmer forums would be the best place to ask. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/The-Highest-Possible-Mesmer-Burst)

Ropechef.6192:

116k hundred blades.

While we can’t have full duration of hundred blades, I think something like
First couple of 100b ticks -> Whirling Charge -> Weapon swap to stop animation, sigil proc -> Evicerate
might be able to compete – though I just thought of that off the top of my head, so I have no idea if that would actually work. Still, I think warriors deserve to have their burst measured, and that calls for a “Highest Warrior Burst” thread. I think I’ll go make one right now
(EDIT: Done. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/The-Highest-Possible-Warrior-Burst)

What about the daggerstorm burst inside a mesmer’s feedback? I’m not sure of the numbers but I know it does 40k+ in the first 1/4 second. It would have time to pulse twice given the above stipulations.

Tman.6349:

What about the daggerstorm burst inside a mesmer’s feedback? I’m not sure of the numbers but I know it does 40k+ in the first 1/4 second. It would have time to pulse twice given the above stipulations.

How does this work? Feedback and Dagger storm both reflect. Dagger storm lasts longer so the thief wouldn’t get hit.

You can’t reflect a projectile more than two times. Just for fun, go to PvP ‘daul’ arena and have a friend bring a feedback mesmer. Have them cast feedback on you and then use daggerstorm. It’s that simple. The HP melt is pretty epic.

Tman.6349:

You can’t reflect a projectile more than once.

fixed it for you

Maybe the AoE reflects (Feedback, Wall of Reflection) work differently, but you can play ping pong with personal reflects (Magnetic Aura/Wave, Mirror). Quite fun to see Stone Daggers + Rockbarrier>Hurl flying multiple times between you and your target.

It could also be an issue with Dagger Storm and other bouncing projectiles, but projectiles can definitely reflected multiple times.

I fixed the Revealed Training bug and added another burst rotation for thieves. I also decided it’s better to put the calculations in attached .txt files instead of the actual posts, partly due to spoiler tags failing me and partly due to the size limitations on posts.

I’m currently trying to figure out how to calculate Mind Wrack damage, and when that’s dealt with I’m doing the math for mesmers and warriors as well. I also feel like elementalist burst could still be pushed a little bit further, so there’s still hope we reach that 100k mark

http://youtu.be/2U2E6mTsL7E?t=1m5s war riffle :P

What if someone stepped on all marks and wells from powermancer at the same time while getting hit with lich auto attack and having all of them critting and proccing chill of death and air + fire sigils? Can that even happen?

^I think there’s an internal cooldown on the sigils, and when the damage is that high you’re better off with +damage% sigils instead. The marks don’t really hit that high, so even with Lich Form stat increases I think the burst would stay below 40k. That’s not to say necromancers can’t hurt – my glass cannon necromancer wipes out entire teams like nothing, but generally speaking it takes about 3-5 seconds to do so instead of the 1 we’re looking for here.

Still, if we could squeeze a Reaper’s Touch in there we might have something worthy of the 50k+ club.

Azo.5860:

http://youtu.be/2U2E6mTsL7E?t=1m5s war riffle :P

My personal record is a 22k kill shot on a level 80 target, and I imagine we could push it up to the 30k-35k territory. But why settle for one hit when you have a whole second to go after it? With some quickness you can combine it with Eviscerate, and I have a few other ideas I’d like to try as well

For Mind Wrack calculation, this may help you:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User:Relyk/sandbox/coefficient

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Does-compounding-power-affect-shatter/first#post3981088

Ansau.7326:

For Mind Wrack calculation, this may help you:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User:Relyk/sandbox/coefficient

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Does-compounding-power-affect-shatter/first#post3981088

Thanks! I also got some advice in mesmer sub forums, and I think I’ve figured it out. With that done, I should be able to calculate warrior and mesmer burst tomorrow

would it be possible for you to make a similar thread but for "condition Burst"
just to keep all the conditions are better blah blah talk down.

With our rules we’re lucky if we reach 5k condition damage. Conditions take time to set up and even with the setup they’re pressure rather than burst, so it’s not really a fair comparison

My apologies for taking so long with the mesmer/warrior burst by the way!

EDIT: Long story short, I found out I really am going to the university (Yay! ), so I had to submit applications for housing and send confirmations that yes, I do indeed want to study there and what not, so I’ve been a bit distracted. The actual calculations should be quick to do once I get back to doing things.