Guild Wars 2

So, are condition builds more viable now?
My idea about the update was that conditions now would do the same damage as physical damage but need longer time.

Physical damage:
- instant direct damage
- damage can be reduced by high armour (husks in silver wastes for example)

Condition damage:
- ignores armour
- needs longer time to get something down

But the damage of conditions has been reduced while the duration of conditions has remained the same, so how good are condition builds now?

Condition damage on its own will never, and should never, compete with zerker builds. It would be unfair for one stat on its own to give you the same kind of damage output others use three stats to get, while still giving you two extra stat slots for defensive stats.

That being said, if you go for gear like sinisters, which has power, precision, condition damage (three damage stats), then I can see some builds competing with the damage of zerker gear for certain classes. The lower physical damage from crit damage loss would be supplemented with higher condition damage.

The main difference now though, and the one that goes the most way to making condition builds more viable in all forms of content, is the removal of the condition cap limit. It means you can have two people spamming conditions in a dungeon without either of them suffering a dps loss because of a cap. That alone makes them much more viable now than they ever have been in the past as far as PvE is concerned.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Condition damage on its own will never, and should never, compete with zerker builds. It would be unfair for one stat on its own to give you the same kind of damage output others use three stats to get, while still giving you two extra stat slots for defensive stats.

That being said, if you go for gear like sinisters, which has power, precision, condition damage (three damage stats), then I can see some builds competing with the damage of zerker gear for certain classes. The lower physical damage from crit damage loss would be supplemented with higher condition damage.

The main difference now though, and the one that goes the most way to making condition builds more viable in all forms of content, is the removal of the condition cap limit. It means you can have two people spamming conditions in a dungeon without either of them suffering a dps loss because of a cap. That alone makes them much more viable now than they ever have been in the past as far as PvE is concerned.

Actually they should and they do in just about EVERY single game of this type in the genre except here cause A-Net kittened it up from the get go.

You are EXTREMELY wrong about condi builds and condi gear on all fronts. If you dont run traits that apply condis on crits etc. with high enough precision you end up with bursts of around 6-8 stacks of it. The rest of conditions are supplimental and your total damage from them falls under your main one. To get high condi stacks you DO need full precision. In addition you also need power AND might stacks to further suppliment your DPS, it adds up significantly. In all dire gear your stacks fall down to as low as 2-3 of each of your damage condis.

In addition, you are also wrong about power builds not having same options as dire builds. Just as condition builds have Dire, Carrion, Rabbid and now Sinister, power builds have Soldiers, Valkarie, Knights and Berserker stat sets. And thats ignoring the healing stat which may come into play in HoT and I hope that it does.

Also, condi builds SHOULD surpass berserker builds because the meta is so incredibly stale its putting off entire groups of people from the game. A-Net needs to change it, if they can’t balance it so its balanced like in otehr games, then at least they can balance it by rotating the meta through a variety of builds, which is also done and used successfully in other games in this genre.

If power builds have been on top for 3 years, then it would be good for the game that now they make condi builds on top for the next 3 years. This is another good and proven in the industry way to balance things.

And to answer OPs question, no they are still not viable within the meta. Engi, Ele, and Guard can come close, but none of the other professions. Especially the ones that were at the bottom which are necro and mesmer, are still at the bottom by an incredibly huge margin. A-Net completely failed on this aspect.

If we talk about PvE. Sinister is pretty close to Bezerker, but it depend on the situation. I don’t have definitive information on all profession but

- Guardian in sinister is as good and even better than Bezerker in solo situation. In party, Sinister guardian are a little behind bezerker by around 8-10%.

- Engineer sinister are better than bezerker if fight last 14sec or more. In record run that mean around 1/3 of dungeons, in speed run it’s probably like half, while in pugs it’s almost all of them.

- Ranger sinister is better than berzerker.

You just need to keep in mind that in all situation Sinister have two disadvantage over bezerker. They have some problem against object (CoF path 1 door, burrow from AC, etc) and don’t work as well in a party that use Icebow a lot.

Basically. If you run pugs, you can run either Sinister/Berserker/Assassin on pretty much all profession and it will be good. If you run pugs, but want to optimize yourself sinister is good better only for some professions. If you run in organized speed run, then it depend on a lot of variable, but Berserker usually win.