Guild Wars 2

Xyonon.3987:

The reason for this is the Chronomancer. Quickness uptime and effectivity equals pre patch values, yet alacrity on the other hand has overall been nerfed. This means CD based playstyles took a hit, whereas auto attacking playstyles stayed the same. Or rather, power engi became stronger in comparison to the condi engi.

You have 50% more attack speed and (down from 40%) 25% less CD. You will definitly be using more autos now.

Stronger, sure, and probably competitive enough where you might actually kill Sabetha with power engineers … but it’s not a significant enough change to be better.

It’s important to note that quickness doesn’t just affect auto-attacks. It affects all skills with cast times—and the grenade auto is casted; therefore, with more grenade throws under quickness that means even more Shrapnel/Sharpshooter procs.

It’s also important to note that power builds aren’t any more about auto-attacking than condi builds are. Power builds rotate between freeze grenade, shrapnel grenade, grenade barrage, acid bomb, flame blast, jump shot, blunderbuss, and so on.

There are very few situations where auto-attacking is preferential to using CD skills, so you are very rarely just standing there and auto-attacking with either build. You are right, though, to point out that you do spend more time auto-attacking with a power build than you do with condi.

These are things that can’t simply be supported with a calculator. Show me a video where you’re downing bosses with three power engineers instead of three viper engineers and then that’s all that needs to be said.

Heya Phineas!

Phineas Poe.3018:

Not sure why you guys keep trying to reinvent the wheel here. The numbers have been done. Raids have been cleared. Builds have been tested.

You have to reinvent the wheel if your terrain changes. With that metaphor I want to say, hot changed everything – the Chronomancer changed everything.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Looking at things from a baseline perspective is pointless when traits are significant damage modifiers. Obviously the bomb kit auto does more power damage than anything else; it has a 125% power coefficient and is arguably one of the strongest auto attacks in the entire game across all professions.

Totally agree with that one. To get solid results – always go with full buffed average numbers.

Phineas Poe.3018:

But when you take into consideration Sharpshooter and Shrapnel it gets completely edged out. Against bosses like Gorseval where you’re just going ham the entire time your bleed stacks will commonly climb over 9K—and a lot of that is thanks to those two traits. And this is why the second error you made is so significantly egregious:

He was obviously talking about power engi and not condi engi. I think every condi engi knows that his / her nades aa’s are better than the bomb ones. Especially against heavy armored targets.

small info:
Condi Bomb aa: 5697 dps (62% power, 38% condi)
Condi Nade aa: 6536 dps (43% power, 57% condi)

Phineas Poe.3018:

Unless something has changed, our maximum DPS spec is still Viper’s and the grenade kit best procs all of our on-crit/hit condi traits. Bleed stacking is like 25-30% of our overall damage output, and is one of the few consistent and easily testable/observable aspects of the condition build.

Something has changed, yes – hot – quickness and alacrity. Since hot power engi dps is higher than condi engi dps.
The only place where this wasn’t the case, is Gorseval due his 2600 armor. If you used slick shoes, even there power was stronger than condi. But now the alacrity nerf hit us, power is max dps against everything but husks in open world. :P
Condis just got hyped from internet guides and those blindly following them, especially the “new engis” who rised cuz of the requirements for condi professions against red guardian. If there wouldn’t be a red add, all the engis would go power and deal about 50% more damage against VG itself. Yet mostly because of it’s low armor of 2000.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I am not trying to tell you guys that you have to play a condition engineer in raids, but there’s a reason why raid groups like mine downed the Vale Guardian day one while people were screwing around with power rifle builds hitting enrage timers at 40%.

Hehe, yea, the only reason for this is when A) there are NO condis for the red add at all or when you are simply better players. I think for most situations it was. As a pure dps, even rifle scrapper would be better than condi engi but only against VG -> low armor.

Phineas Poe.3018:

You may choose not to run the grenade kit, and that’s a fine choice. But grenades are still required for maximum DPS, and yes a lot of us are quite sick of it but know what it takes to clear content like that … which is unfortunately why I only play this game roughly an hour a week queuing PvP and don’t raid anymore.

You may choose to go full aa FT, but that’s a kittenty choice. :’D Yea I agree. I personally do like the nades tough, but yes, they are a must have for MAX dps.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Xyonon.3987:

The reason for this is the Chronomancer. Quickness uptime and effectivity equals pre patch values, yet alacrity on the other hand has overall been nerfed. This means CD based playstyles took a hit, whereas auto attacking playstyles stayed the same. Or rather, power engi became stronger in comparison to the condi engi.

You have 50% more attack speed and (down from 40%) 25% less CD. You will definitly be using more autos now.

Stronger, sure, and probably competitive enough where you might actually kill Sabetha with power engineers … but it’s not a significant enough change to be better.

As mentioned before. The condi engi has been said to have higher dps than power engi since the condi rework, wich I totally agree with.
With the introduction of the Chrono, the power engi already gained a bigger boost than condi did and now a few weeks ago, condi took a bigger hit than power did. The gap is quite big now.
I’ve been doing calculations for about 50 hours against each raid boss for condi and power engi with reality based stats and situations. Even there power was already better than condi, everywhere except for gorsy without slick shoes.
Sadly I have to start over again cuz of the alacrity changes … -.-‘’ Well, I’m an ambitious person, so well, I’ll get over it!

Phineas Poe.3018:

It’s important to note that quickness doesn’t just affect auto-attacks. It affects all skills with cast times—and the grenade auto is casted; therefore, with more grenade throws under quickness that means even more Shrapnel/Sharpshooter procs.

Yes it affects every’s skill DpiSCT (damage per invested second cast time). Yet it doesn’t matter that much, if a skill has a cd. This cd mainly forms the dps. DpiSCT only gives you a priorisation list for all your skills.
The argument about more shrapnels and sharpshooters is futile. Those traits are a solid part of the whole dps. Quickness increases their damage by the same % amount as quickness affects the rest of the damage of the skill that proc it. They happen as more often, as the skills that trigger them do.

Phineas Poe.3018:

It’s also important to note that power builds aren’t any more about auto-attacking than condi builds are. Power builds rotate between freeze grenade, shrapnel grenade, grenade barrage, acid bomb, flame blast, jump shot, blunderbuss, and so on.

There are very few situations where auto-attacking is preferential to using CD skills, so you are very rarely just standing there and auto-attacking with either build. You are right, though, to point out that you do spend more time auto-attacking with a power build than you do with condi.

That’s not the point. In fact, power build do even less auto attacks than condi builds. But the point is that you will be forced to do more auto attacks than before. There is a huge difference when you go from 1-2 power autos / 3-4 condi autos to 3-6 power autos / 9-12 condi autos. Power autos deal 9k with hammer and 12k with bomb without quickness. Condi autos deal pathetic 6.5k dps wich is compareable to sword auto of the mes… x.x

Phineas Poe.3018:

These are things that can’t simply be supported with a calculator. Show me a video where you’re downing bosses with three power engineers instead of three viper engineers and then that’s all that needs to be said.

They can be supported with calculations and once I’m done, you’ll see them here in the forums. If you agree with it is your own choice but it’s hard to deny math imo (unless you find mistakes ofc!).
Yet what I already can give you, are results of all important damaging skills in form of a DpiSCT / Priorisation List for both condi and power engi. It’s:
Skill Name | Power Damage | Condi Damage | Cast Time | Cool Down | DpiSCT
What’s on my “to fix” list is that I forgot to reduce the CD of toolbelt skills for the condi engi due a trait.

About that vid with power engis – I’ll let you know when I got one… ;3

Greez!
- Ziggy

I’m surprised how little people consider the chance to proc a crit more often with a weapon like FT vs. something that hits much less often doesn’t actually change the face of the build they are using.

My big problem is that the people that are pumping out these ‘facts’ about highest ENGI DPS are showing comparisons to other things of interest.

FT doesn’t do as much DPS as grenades? OK, but HOW much less? Enough to convince me crit procing and quicknessing my way into a hybrid from power FT build isn’t worth that difference? Show me!

Xyonon.3987:

snippity

Greez!
- Ziggy

possible nitpick but i see an inconsistency between IA and IP/geomancy/air in that all 4 are no cast time things with only cooldowns so all 4 should have infinities for dpisct i think? but obviously the “free” dps that they offer is a somewhat interesting number (which is what is in the dpisct column for IP/geo/air). i think sharpshooter maybe needs to be added to each skill instead of having its own row since its modding each skill on a per hit basis? idk, where it is isnt a big issue for me cuz i know what it does.

also, i see that neither sheet has the toolbelt cd, but i say that scrapper > tools any time you dont already have permaquickness (that is a thing in raids, but its not as much of a thing in fractals). for either build, but its more applicable to condi scrapper since i can see power scrapper is already a thing amongst people reinventing the wheel.

also, on the subject of air, i kinda assume force is the other sigil? what if you took concentration instead of air? weapon swap sigils are trivial for engis to make use of and it provides 77% uptime of 33% boon duration, which smells really nice with applied force and blasting fire and perfectly weighted/mass momentum (oh and HAE and no scope too) especially since its a very controllable uptime. but again thats more of a thing for fractals or even open world than raids i guess…

idk, i think its a good idea to bring your own quickness since most raids will only bring 1 chrono? they kitten out quickness but its likely enough that you only get inspired every other time since theres 8 allies and 4 targets. and inspiration should give around 20 sec on a 22.5 sec cd, usable twice at first but then only usable once at a time until the next continuum split. hmm…

Xyonon.3987:

Something has changed, yes – hot – quickness and alacrity. Since hot power engi dps is higher than condi engi dps.

This statement goes completely against my personal experience, but I am intrigued to see your final results showing the damage difference.

Shaogin.2679:

Sorry I’m late to return to this conversation. Anyways, not sure why rifle and grenades are being compared, you take both, same with other kits.

Similar efficiency on some fronts.

Think the thing to consider is, what utility that you don’t already take can replace grenade kit and provide the same or greater dps?

That was kind of the point. Even rifle, a base level weapon and definitely not truly comparable a kit, had more utility. Rifle’s blunderbluss does more DPS than grenades’ Shrapnel Grenade and typically will apply 3 to 4 bleeds since distance can’t be that great if you’re swapping to bomb kit to plant firebomb. When traited it has a recharge of 8s versus 5 but provides +1 bleed which more than makes up for it.

This ignores the rest of the utility.

Lastly, hitting your target with grenades should not be an issue for anyone anymore with the snap ground targeting.

I haven’t tried since the newer update where they said they did something to improve it; when it first came out I thought “this ought to be neat” but against anything that moved faster than molasses it would aim “where they were” versus “where they were going”. It’s wonderful for stationary targets of course.

I’m neither here nor there on that one.

Wahoo!

Obtena.7952:

FT doesn’t do as much DPS as grenades? OK, but HOW much less? Enough to convince me crit procing and quicknessing my way into a hybrid from power FT build isn’t worth that difference? Show me!

Uhhh, one post above yours – there is a picture that shows what you want to know!

insanemaniac.2456:

possible nitpick but i see an inconsistency between IA and IP/geomancy/air in that all 4 are no cast time things with only cooldowns so all 4 should have infinities for dpisct i think? but obviously the “free” dps that they offer is a somewhat interesting number (which is what is in the dpisct column for IP/geo/air). i think sharpshooter maybe needs to be added to each skill instead of having its own row since its modding each skill on a per hit basis? idk, where it is isnt a big issue for me cuz i know what it does.

Yea, IA, IP, geomancy and air are a bit wrong. It’s because the interesting part about them is the DpS they are doing, agreed it’s not DpiSCT, with those it’s really DpS.
The average sharpshooter trait damage has been calculated and added for each skill, that’s also the reason why every single attack (even in the power build) deals a part condi dmg. But yes – you are right this part is messy! xP

insanemaniac.2456:

also, i see that neither sheet has the toolbelt cd, but i say that scrapper > tools any time you dont already have permaquickness (that is a thing in raids, but its not as much of a thing in fractals). for either build, but its more applicable to condi scrapper since i can see power scrapper is already a thing amongst people reinventing the wheel.

Yup I already mentioned in the other post that I forgot or rather calculated it later – the toolbelt cd trait is for condi only tough. In fotm you can easily stack speed for a minute with a few blasts and a lightning field tough

insanemaniac.2456:

also, on the subject of air, i kinda assume force is the other sigil? what if you took concentration instead of air? weapon swap sigils are trivial for engis to make use of and it provides 77% uptime of 33% boon duration, which smells really nice with applied force and blasting fire and perfectly weighted/mass momentum (oh and HAE and no scope too) especially since its a very controllable uptime. but again thats more of a thing for fractals or even open world than raids i guess…

For open world, that’d be amazing. Yet I have an own open world hammer using Force and Strength. Strength procs so often with FT, it’s basicly always on ICD. Especially for the price of concentration – ugh.
In raids it’s really not needed at all, but you know that yourself you said. Air is overestimated and wiki lies about the stats. It’s a much lower power coef. as most ppl think. Air is for most professions a dps loss compared to accuracy, unless you hit the 100% crit chance mark with full zerk gear, wich only do thief, engi, rev and danger time mesmer (and necro but … well necro). Still it’s the best dps for engi.

insanemaniac.2456:

idk, i think its a good idea to bring your own quickness since most raids will only bring 1 chrono? they kitten out quickness but its likely enough that you only get inspired every other time since theres 8 allies and 4 targets. and inspiration should give around 20 sec on a 22.5 sec cd, usable twice at first but then only usable once at a time until the next continuum split. hmm…

Depends on your pt. You have 45% quickness uptime with your trait AND the revenant, yes. So you should always hang out in the quickness poor region, like going for green fields at VG, take further adds at gorsy or go up to the cannons at sabby / go ranged in last phase when druid goes melee (sabby too). Stuff like that.
In our guild we always want 2 mes, cuz their boost is too strong and a 2nd mes means he can go for dangertime, giving him the possibility to have not a too crappy dps output. We only demand 100% quickenss and alacrity uptime, wich is also easier achieved by 2 mes and proper equip, since they can use 4 wells then (more alacrity with calamity).

Phineas Poe.3018:

Xyonon.3987:

Something has changed, yes – hot – quickness and alacrity. Since hot power engi dps is higher than condi engi dps.

This statement goes completely against my personal experience, but I am intrigued to see your final results showing the damage difference.

I’ll be happy to show you my results as soon as they are aviable! I have expections for the new alacrity uptime, but we’ll know when A) I’ve done my calculations and furthermore I’ve played both ingame for the rotations sake.

Greez!
- Xyonon, … uhh Ziggy ,, uhgh … it’s 4 am here ç_ç good night!

Xyonon.3987:

Wahoo!

---

Obtena.7952:

FT doesn’t do as much DPS as grenades? OK, but HOW much less? Enough to convince me crit procing and quicknessing my way into a hybrid from power FT build isn’t worth that difference? Show me!

Uhhh, one post above yours – there is a picture that shows what you want to know!

I think you misunderstand what I’m asking for and typically what people are talking about when analyzing DPS.

When someone says “X Build is the top DPS”, they are talking about a specific build that relies on a set of rotations of skills. What I think I see in your chart is an assembly of individual skills in isolation. That really doesn’t tell anyone the DPS you get for the ideal rotation in any particular build.

For instance .. let’s simplify with a comparison:

Does the highest DPS FT camping build use Flame Blast or not? I can’t tell from just your chart. Usually this is answered with a model the skills as they execute over a period of time and enhance those model based on proc’ing other effects, conditions, etc … If your chart does do that, then I simply don’t understand it.

My overall general question is how much DPS am I losing camping an FT vs. meta with Grenades or whatever. That way I can kitten the benefit of the boons I’m getting from the FT build I’m using and if it’s worth the loss of damage.

DGraves.3720:

Rifle’s blunderbluss does more DPS than grenades’ Shrapnel Grenade and typically will apply 3 to 4 bleeds since distance can’t be that great if you’re swapping to bomb kit to plant firebomb. When traited it has a recharge of 8s versus 5 but provides +1 bleed which more than makes up for it.

I still don’t get the point of this comparison. They’re not competing against each other; one is a kit while the other is a weapon. And there’s nothing stopping you from weaving a couple Shrapnel Grenades between every Blunderbuss and taking advantage of both … unless you’re trying to imply that you can ignore taking grenades because how much damage the rifle does alone. But that’d be a mistake.

Obtena.7952:

My overall general question is how much DPS am I losing camping an FT vs. meta with Grenades or whatever. That way I can kitten the benefit of the boons I’m getting from the FT build I’m using and if it’s worth the loss of damage.

well lets see.. using that spreadsheet:

you do a rotation of something like 4211121112111(…) purely camping ft, which at full buffs will do something slightly over 10k ish dps (because 2 and 4 are pretty worth your time). in a power scrapper meta build youll prolly do closer to 18-20k dps because the bread and butter skills of that build are ft2/hammer2/nades2 and you should be spending about half your button presses / time casting those, and the other half casting harder hitting skills, and the rest of the gaps with the green/yellow skills.

so you lose about half your dps just camping ft. youll do maybe 25-50% better than pure camping by at least using the really hard hitting skills like acid bomb and nade barrage, but since the point is to be lazy your dps really suffers.

Xyonon.3987:

Greez!
- Xyonon, … uhh Ziggy ,, uhgh … it’s 4 am here ç_ç good night!

oh i see a real error — rocket charge cd is 12 now

Phineas Poe.3018:

DGraves.3720:

Rifle’s blunderbluss does more DPS than grenades’ Shrapnel Grenade and typically will apply 3 to 4 bleeds since distance can’t be that great if you’re swapping to bomb kit to plant firebomb. When traited it has a recharge of 8s versus 5 but provides +1 bleed which more than makes up for it.

I still don’t get the point of this comparison. They’re not competing against each other; one is a kit while the other is a weapon. And there’s nothing stopping you from weaving a couple Shrapnel Grenades between every Blunderbuss and taking advantage of both … unless you’re trying to imply that you can ignore taking grenades because how much damage the rifle does alone. But that’d be a mistake.

It was a question of alternatives. It isn’t that they can’t run concurrently but rather that in totality the statement that grenades are a requirement isn’t wholly true. Generally speaking most people that I know of run pistols versus rifles when building condition builds though.

The base point is that all things considered you are not doomed to some hell for not taking grenades whether power or condition because other weapons can and do deal like damage. That’s not to say you shouldn’t use grenades.

So after you used blunderbuss you use what? Rifle aa? Or nades … ;3

Aslong as you do not have a full rotation without any aa’s and without using nades, nades will be required for max dps.

Xyonon.3987:

So after you used blunderbuss you use what? Rifle aa? Or nades … ;3

Aslong as you do not have a full rotation without any aa’s and without using nades, nades will be required for max dps.

If the two rotations were to exclude one another then it would just be another kit skill, probably FT for burning for both, if the rotations were bound to their weapon types with only rifle and only grenade then the other skills alongside appropriate utility skills and toolbelt abilities etc.

There’s no particularly insane shift. If you took them both then obviously it’s not a comparison anymore, is it?

Whatever the case I have long forgotten what this was about.

What’s the deal with you, escaping arguments all the time?

Professor Marvel.7584:

In PvE I have been enjoying a (questionable) Flamethrower Viper build, with the Scrapper line equipped for the gyros. I particularly enjoy the synergy between the “gain might/stability with flamethrower” trait with both the “gain might when you have stability” and “gain 3 sec quickness when over 10 stacks of might” (both of those scrapper traits). So I have permanent stability and permanent ~12 stacks of Might (without strength runes!) When I have a flamethrower equipped.

By-the-numbers, grenade setups are probably stronger, but seeing 10k burn ticks and 6k damage per FT cycle doesn’t feel weak.

At the end of the day, especially in PvE, maximizing your DPS output should take a backseat to playing a class and style that you enjoy. I don’t know anyone who plays a build like I do, and I’m ok with that, because Viper Flamethrower with Gyros is just too freaking fun for me to give up.

I do something similar, albeit without the gear (my engineer’s gear is close to celestial). That said, though, I don’t take my engineer into raids or other content where you really want maximum efficiency.

Wouldn’t it be plain better if you’d just use the same build with power gear?

About those 10k burnings, I really doubt that’s the average tic, rather the highest one with napalm, ia and aa… :|

Xyonon.3987:

What’s the deal with you, escaping arguments all the time?

Azure.8670:

DGraves.3720:

Grenades were never required for max DPS.

In pve? Please explain this one

I’d best not. Let’s presume I said nothing. That’s just a fight waiting to happen.

It is my pesky futuresight. Forgive my unwillingness.

No. Some pretty lady characters get great DPS too ^_^

maybe this is off topic but i have question to power players.

really reach 20k dps with power meta? i tried on fractals with dps mater. but about 10k everytime (or more low). or mean just reach 20k During a little?

gomen.1238:

maybe this is off topic but i have question to power players.

really reach 20k dps with power meta? i tried on fractals with dps mater. but about 10k everytime (or more low). or mean just reach 20k During a little?

are you comped up with 3 buff bot classes (chrono, rev/war, druid) and in full ascended gear with proper food, sigils, and runes? do you know your dps rotation if you have all of those things?

insanemaniac.2456:

are you comped up with 3 buff bot classes (chrono, rev/war, druid) and in full ascended gear with proper food, sigils, and runes? do you know your dps rotation if you have all of those things?

ascended, food, sigils and runes ya.
boon mean i think its same as condition build on fractal. sometime is sometime.

dps rotation. use high Priority Skills every cd like Orbital Strike, Grenade Barrage Acid Bomb, nade, hammer skills . All these are written in metabattle.

if boon priority is higher than condi, i understand.

my question mean, anyone watched 20k dps on fractals?
In other word, is power build useful or useless on fractals?

gomen.1238:

boon mean i think its same as condition build on fractal. sometime is sometime.

…

if boon priority is higher than condi, i understand.

idk what you mean by this but it sounds like your group composition isnt doubling your damage the way it would in the nearly ideal conditions that dont exist in pug fractals.

power build is useful. i like running it as much as condi.

gomen.1238:

maybe this is off topic but i have question to power players.

really reach 20k dps with power meta? i tried on fractals with dps mater. but about 10k everytime (or more low). or mean just reach 20k During a little?

Prime example.

No, you will never reach 20k dps. You may reach 20k/s for at best (and I am completely unsure if that is possible for an engineer but I know I have never hit anything that ridiculously high with power alone nor have I seen anyone else) 10/15s but this nowhere near 20k dps.

And no, it doesn’t matter how decked out you are, because the bottleneck is the coefficient.

DGraves.3720:

gomen.1238:

maybe this is off topic but i have question to power players.

really reach 20k dps with power meta? i tried on fractals with dps mater. but about 10k everytime (or more low). or mean just reach 20k During a little?

Prime example.

No, you will never reach 20k dps. You may reach 20k/s for at best (and I am completely unsure if that is possible for an engineer but I know I have never hit anything that ridiculously high with power alone nor have I seen anyone else) 10/15s but this nowhere near 20k dps.

And no, it doesn’t matter how decked out you are, because the bottleneck is the coefficient.

considering the old numbers were ~18k on paper without quickness or alacrity, yes, you could do 20k, because the max paper dps is more like 24k when including those.

Wahoo!

Yea you reach 20k dps with a power build for sure, but not in high lv fotm where toughness is too high. DpS is always according to 2600 armor, aka, Gorseval.

If you do not reach 20k dps with a power engi, it seems your one of those engis who “spawned for vale guardian” and never ever used a hammer or a power engi before. :P
Bomb auto attack alone is 18k dps with quickness so you’d be terrible to ruin to get 2k dps more out of all your skills.

Greez!
- Ziggy

Xyonon.3987:

DpS is always according to 2600 armor, aka, Gorseval.

understand. thx for response.

gomen.1238:

Xyonon.3987:

DpS is always according to 2600 armor, aka, Gorseval.

understand. thx for response.

Sure np. It’s because tooltips are against 2600 armor too, so we all take that as the base.

Against Sabby you get 10% more damage (medium aka 2200 armor), against Vale even 30% (light aka 2000 armor), compared to Gorsy / tool tip numbers. Remember only power is affected by armor, condi builds are always the same, that’s why condi engi is most efficient against Gorsy, power against VG.

insanemaniac.2456:

considering the old numbers were ~18k on paper without quickness or alacrity, yes, you could do 20k, because the max paper dps is more like 24k when including those.

Averaged 20,000 damage every second from second zero to sixty is so stupidly high it’s not even believable. The easiest way to think of this is that if your first hit is not 20,000 then the next hits have to compensate by being just that much higher. Let’s be generous and say your first hit is a critical strike and does 10k, so you simply take the 1.2m you expect and subtract 10,000 then average the rest out over 59s since that’s what’s left in your minute. Very simple.

So all of your next hits for the entire minute need to be worth 20,169.49, but your first hit was only worth 10, so is your second hit going to jump twice over in effectiveness? I doubt it.

This brings to bear the next question: how long does it take to actually get to this mythical 20k dps? We know it’s not immediate so where is the answer to that? It’s not accounted for. There is no (unrealistic and likely false) “It takes 36s to achieve the 20k promised by this build.” The next question after that is: “How long can it truly be sustained?” If it were to take say 40s to reach this mythical 20k dps and our enemy uses a move you must dodge every 30s doesn’t that inherently prevent you from ever reaching 20k dps?

In real life if companies did what they said on paper the world would be a much wealthier place. Same thing here, it’s too simple to be reliable enough to bargain off of despite using variables, some of which are not player controlled, as straight guaranteed values.

DGraves.3720:

insanemaniac.2456:

considering the old numbers were ~18k on paper without quickness or alacrity, yes, you could do 20k, because the max paper dps is more like 24k when including those.

Averaged 20,000 damage every second from second zero to sixty is so stupidly high it’s not even believable. The easiest way to think of this is that if your first hit is not 20,000 then the next hits have to compensate by being just that much higher. Let’s be generous and say your first hit is a critical strike and does 10k, so you simply take the 1.2m you expect and subtract 10,000 then average the rest out over 59s since that’s what’s left in your minute. Very simple.

So all of your next hits for the entire minute need to be worth 20,169.49, but your first hit was only worth 10, so is your second hit going to jump twice over in effectiveness? I doubt it.

This brings to bear the next question: how long does it take to actually get to this mythical 20k dps? We know it’s not immediate so where is the answer to that? It’s not accounted for. There is no (unrealistic and likely false) “It takes 36s to achieve the 20k promised by this build.” The next question after that is: “How long can it truly be sustained?” If it were to take say 40s to reach this mythical 20k dps and our enemy uses a move you must dodge every 30s doesn’t that inherently prevent you from ever reaching 20k dps?

In real life if companies did what they said on paper the world would be a much wealthier place. Same thing here, it’s too simple to be reliable enough to bargain off of despite using variables, some of which are not player controlled, as straight guaranteed values.

first of all, in a group like this you would initiate with grenade barrage and other hard hitters that hit for > 20k dps immediately. and then slowly drop off as you run through your rotation and eventually have to (o god) autoattack. you will be at max buffs almost immediately.

second of all, it may seem unbelievable, but why do you think the super hardcore people have been bored with the raid for months, think its easy, have it on farm mode, and or are saying they cant wait for the next one? i, for one, used to be a scrub in half cele gear 2.5 years ago. fractals were hard af, and neither i nor my friends thought differently. but after really refining my own gear and play, i found i could pug pretty much anything np, and once i could do that, every once in a while i ran into other likeminded groups or people that really make this all realistic. seriously, the game is full of people who have no idea about at least 1 of their gear, their play, their group support, or communication, and these people will bring you down in group content whether you are one of them or not.

I decided that if I was going to make the claim that an infinite 18k damage per second was ridiculous I should look up the amount of power it would take to make it sustainable. So I did. Presuming the damage formula is (PWC)/A or Power times Weapon Damage times Skill Coefficient all divided by Armor and using 2600 as armor I would solve for power.

Since we have damage per second set at 18,000 all we need to do is move some variables, so it’s (DA)/(WC)=P, so (18,000 * 2600)/(1265*2.7). The weapon power I used is the highest weapon damage an engineer can wield at 1,265 (rifle) for the weapon and the highest skill coefficient as an instant cast of 2.7 for Jump Shot.

Completely hypothetical and when plugged in you get 13,702.24 power. I’ll make every hit a crit now and give the max crit factor which I will just name as 300, again, unattainable as far as I know, and you still need 4,567.41 power.

So in order to do 18k dps you would need to instantly cast jumpshot at a 1s interval, have a steady rifle with the max rifle range damage, be able to complete a cycle of jumpshot every second, and have 4567.41 power at 300% critical damage with a 100% critical rate against any enemy with 2,600 armor. And nothing less.

I have no idea how people make up these numbers since this is jump shot all-in-one with no cooldown and a 1s activation time using the same formula they posted and go by on the wiki. There’s no way a power build is going to produce enough bleed to make up a loss of 4,568 power when the capture ratio for power’s effectiveness is essentially doubled and then some.

DGraves.3720:

I decided that if I was going to make the claim that an infinite 18k damage per second was ridiculous I should look up the amount of power it would take to make it sustainable. So I did. Presuming the damage formula is (PWC)/A or Power times Weapon Damage times Skill Coefficient all divided by Armor and using 2600 as armor I would solve for power.

Since we have damage per second set at 18,000 all we need to do is move some variables, so it’s (DA)/(WC)=P, so (18,000 * 2600)/(1265*2.7). The weapon power I used is the highest weapon damage an engineer can wield at 1,265 (rifle) for the weapon and the highest skill coefficient as an instant cast of 2.7 for Jump Shot.

Completely hypothetical and when plugged in you get 13,702.24 power. I’ll make every hit a crit now and give the max crit factor which I will just name as 300, again, unattainable as far as I know, and you still need 4,567.41 power.

So in order to do 18k dps you would need to instantly cast jumpshot at a 1s interval, have a steady rifle with the max rifle range damage, be able to complete a cycle of jumpshot every second, and have 4567.41 power at 300% critical damage with a 100% critical rate against any enemy with 2,600 armor. And nothing less.

I have no idea how people make up these numbers since this is jump shot all-in-one with no cooldown and a 1s activation time using the same formula they posted and go by on the wiki. There’s no way a power build is going to produce enough bleed to make up a loss of 4,568 power when the capture ratio for power’s effectiveness is essentially doubled and then some.

ok good start. now account for quickness, and realize that jump shot is actually a pretty low priority skill. we have 3 hard hitters that do double its dps that are taken in the meta scrapper build.

and then if you want to be even more realistic, assume you have a 25% damage increase from frost spirit and grace of the land, which will further reduce the required power.

insanemaniac.2456:

DGraves.3720:

snip

ok good start. now account for quickness, and realize that jump shot is actually a pretty low priority skill. we have 3 hard hitters that do double its dps that are taken in the meta scrapper build.

and then if you want to be even more realistic, assume you have a 25% damage increase from frost spirit and grace of the land, which will further reduce the required power.

Beyond the obvious “whoosh” alright, let’s take quickness and reduce the damage requirement by 25% which is equivalent to doing 25% more damage and even your hypothetical attack which we’ll set to double the real coefficient of jumpshot again with no cooldown and increase the weapon piece by 50% for quickness since it’s the same net effect.

So with a move that has 5.4 coefficient capture, a weapon with a flat 1,897.5 damage all the time, going for 14,400 DPS since we reduced the limit to accommodate you would still need 3,653.93 power and after all our ridiculous and completely impossible additions for ferocity and 100% crit you need a mere 1,461.57 power.

In an equation it looks like so: ((18000/1.25)(2600))/((1265×1.5)(2.7×2))=Power

So, per strike, the only way to achieve this is if the attack in question goes off again every second, so no cooldowns, has 5.4 coefficient (wtf?), 300% critical damage, a stable weapon with 1,898 base power, and a 100% critical rate.

I am absolutely positive that this is doable in game.

DGraves.3720:

insanemaniac.2456:

DGraves.3720:

snip

ok good start. now account for quickness, and realize that jump shot is actually a pretty low priority skill. we have 3 hard hitters that do double its dps that are taken in the meta scrapper build.

and then if you want to be even more realistic, assume you have a 25% damage increase from frost spirit and grace of the land, which will further reduce the required power.

Beyond the obvious “whoosh” alright, let’s take quickness and reduce the damage requirement by 25% which is equivalent to doing 25% more damage and even your hypothetical attack which we’ll set to double the real coefficient of jumpshot again with no cooldown and increase the weapon piece by 50% for quickness since it’s the same net effect.

So with a move that has 5.4 coefficient capture, a weapon with a flat 1,897.5 damage all the time, going for 14,400 DPS since we reduced the limit to accommodate you would still need 3,653.93 power and after all our ridiculous and completely impossible additions for ferocity and 100% crit you need a mere 1,461.57 power.

In an equation it looks like so: ((18000/1.25)(2600))/((1265×1.5)(2.7×2))=Power

So, per strike, the only way to achieve this is if the attack in question goes off again every second, so no cooldowns, has 5.4 coefficient (wtf?), 300% critical damage, a stable weapon with 1,898 base power, and a 100% critical rate.

I am absolutely positive that this is doable in game.

Show Spoiler

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No, no it isn’t…

apparently im not the one who doesnt get it.

you just took an almost ok thought experiment and went off in some out of this world direction after i told you how to make it a little better.

insanemaniac.2456:

apparently im not the one who doesnt get it.

Actually it isn’t about “getting it” since hopefully everyone knows that the above is ridiculous, and I am not talking about the second calculation, but the first. Spreadsheet DPS is usually retroactively expanded which means that whomever is calculating it takes the peak and declares it as the norm rather than taking the average between the crest and the trough and declaring that as the norm.

DPS measurements quoted are not “you should do at least” but “you will do at most” so when someone says “You don’t do 20k dps? Man you suck.” this is equivalent to “You don’t have a perfect rotation, no dodges, and never go down or have someone on your team make an error etc.? Man you suck.”

Which is too bad because DPS would be a great measurement for things if they incorporated simulations that presumed just a tad more leeway for a strong average. I’d be more than willing to believe, say, 14k dps (which is astounding) than 20k dps because at least the latter assumes to some degree that things do not go perfectly.

Misinformation is to the community as poison is to the veins. The heart pumps it though regardless.

DGraves.3720:

insanemaniac.2456:

apparently im not the one who doesnt get it.

Actually it isn’t about “getting it” since hopefully everyone knows that the above is ridiculous, and I am not talking about the second calculation, but the first. Spreadsheet DPS is usually retroactively expanded which means that whomever is calculating it takes the peak and declares it as the norm rather than taking the average between the crest and the trough and declaring that as the norm.

DPS measurements quoted are not “you should do at least” but “you will do _at most” so when someone says “You don’t do 20k dps? Man you suck.” this is equivalent to “You don’t have a perfect rotation, no dodges, and never go down or have someone on your team make an error etc.? Man you suck.”

Which is too bad because DPS would be a great measurement for things if they incorporated simulations that presumed just a tad more leeway for a strong average. I’d be more than willing to believe, say, 14k dps (which is astounding) than 20k dps because at least the latter assumes to some degree that things do not go perfectly.

Misinformation is to the community as poison is to the veins. The heart pumps it though regardless.

holy kitten. simmer down. i literally said 18k was the old paper dps. that number never included quickness, which is a standard buff now in addition to all the other ones that were already.

that means you can take the old number and approximately multiply by 1.33 to get a new paper dps number that shouldnt be a hell of a long way off of the real paper dps. hence, 20k is not an unreasonable real dps number in a full buffed situation, because its < 24k, which is the number youll likely see quoted by the people doing paper dps calculations.

insanemaniac.2456:

holy kitten. simmer down. i literally said 18k was the old paper dps. that number never included quickness, which is a standard buff now in addition to all the other ones that were already.

that means you can take the old number and approximately multiply by 1.33 to get a new paper dps number that shouldnt be a hell of a long way off of the real paper dps. hence, 20k is not an unreasonable real dps number in a full buffed situation, because its < 24k, which is the number youll likely see quoted by the people doing paper dps calculations.

The problem here is that 18k old sheet DPS is too high a quote. It isn’t average DPS so it likely isn’t true DPS. Since you can actually average a rotation to singular digits the only thing you ever have to do is take the coefficients of each attack adding them all together and dividing them by the number of items (an average coefficient) with average base dmg as applicable for kits or attacks that don’t use weapons as the base and the average between your “resting” power (with no buffs including food and other temporary values, the static values) and your “active” power (which is the maximum you can attain within the build as you use it, not the maximum possible from elements you may not use personally or are not there 100% of the time) and divide it by some armor number and you have your real DPS right there.

This doesn’t require an extensive amount of calculation.

Your real average DPS is likely closer to 2/3s whatever you hear quoted (being generous). Also I have no idea how you gathered that quickness improves your DPS by about 33%. If I remember correctly it doesn’t shorten cooldown so your rotation would just run into it’s natural lull faster. That lull shifts based entirely on what is used at the time in effectiveness and should vary quite a bit more. Maybe you are referring to a specific rotation though.

Their are always going to be people that defend the idea that the DPS calculated on paper has a very high correlation to what the actual DPS is in-game, which would need to be measured to confirm this, which I’ve never seen anyone do.

It’s astounding that these calculated DPS values are held in such high regard when this has not been done, even when very simple thought-experiments demonstrate some of those calculated values are not even realistic.

That’s why I don’t think the OP has an answer yet: The answer isn’t found in Excel; it’s found by making a build and measuring the DPS from it and comparing that to a measured DPS build from these so-called ‘meta’ builds.

Guys just download JaxnX, run it, go ingame and record it and then post it here. :P That wall’o’text tough xD

DGraves.3720:

Also I have no idea how you gathered that quickness improves your DPS by about 33%. If I remember correctly it doesn’t shorten cooldown so your rotation would just run into it’s natural lull faster. That lull shifts based entirely on what is used at the time in effectiveness and should vary quite a bit more. Maybe you are referring to a specific rotation though.

think about it for about 10 secs. here:

when you attack with quickness, instead of doing 2 attacks, you do 3 in the same period of time. autoattacks are bad and do about half of your average dps. so quickness will improve your dps, in the worst scenario where you only get extra autos, by 25%. thats a minimum. since engi rotations arent quite tight any more due to hammer instead of rifle, not all of your extra attacks are autos, so they dont all suck and you can get a bit more than 25% extra dps out of quickness. but its not the near-50% increase that necros, thieves, or guards will see since they heavily depend on autos, and that is because of cooldowns.

i am not referring to any rotation. i am simply thinking about the numbers correctly.

Yup, quickness provided by Mesmer increases skills without cd by 50% damage. Alacrity provided by Mesmer increases skills with cd by 33% damage. So whatever rotation you are thinking of in theory, Mes is gonna buff it at least by 33%.

insanemaniac.2456:

think about it for about 10 secs. here:

when you attack with quickness, instead of doing 2 attacks, you do 3 in the same period of time.

Your first error is thinking solely in activations. When you attack while having quickness the activation time is 50% faster, no problem, but the cooldown is the same so your math only works if the activation time is 1s. If it is faster or slower naturally then it doesn’t work and there are attacks that do take more or less time than 1s.

autoattacks are bad and do about half of your average dps.

I would hope not because that would mean that there’s no point to a difficult rotation other than optimizing behavior. If you only, yes, only, double your output through an annoying rotation then you’re not really doing anything astounding. I would expect something a bit more … spectacular. Fortunately that claim is just outright wrong, otherwise we’d be up a creek as gamers.

so quickness will improve your dps, in the worst scenario where you only get extra autos, by 25%. thats a minimum.

Well, again, no, it really isn’t a minimum, because you’re presuming a second on all attacks in the chain. Quickness on say mortar vs. quickness on the toolkit are going to produce different numbers because they have different chains (well, mortars, bombs, and grenades have only 1 in their chain anyway) and thus different execution times. You could find an LCD for time and average them of course but … that seems to be too “easy” for you guys.

since engi rotations arent quite tight any more due to hammer instead of rifle, not all of your extra attacks are autos, so they dont all suck and you can get a bit more than 25% extra dps out of quickness. but its not the near-50% increase that necros, thieves, or guards will see since they heavily depend on autos, and that is because of cooldowns.

But then enter Mr. Opportunity Cost. Bomb kit, bomb AA, normally 1.25 coefficient. On quickness let’s raise it o 1.875 over the same amount of time which in this case is conveniently 1s. Sadly because of this increase it actually has a negative impact on other skills because even though they activate faster they don’t have short cooldowns. So our autoattack bomb at 1.875 p/s can actually outdo our super sweet move X at 2 with a CD of 10s because over the course of that 11s, the one with the activation and then the 10 to wait, you would have easily outpaced the move, and within the capture second the 2 v 1.875 is a meager .025 difference. Quickness has a naturally inverse effect on skills depending on their cooldown.

The longer the cooldown on a skill the less appealing it becomes when compared to skills with very short cooldowns because of how it allows for a higher average based on that CD gap. Quickness is great but not all puppies and rainbows simply because it doesn’t help skills with long cooldowns at all unless they have long channel times. 1s is 1s so then the CD gap is all that’s left to be assessed.

But I’m sure we all stopped listening half an hour ago to this.

i am not referring to any rotation. i am simply thinking about the numbers correctly.

I can dream.

TL;DR: 6th grade math + not overthinking it =/= gw2mathguru

every single one of your paragraphs is based on faulty information.

you are overthinking this, and you are overthinking it really really badly.

insanemaniac.2456:

every single one of your paragraphs is based on faulty information.

you are overthinking this, and you are overthinking it really really badly.

If every single one of my paragraphs is based on faulty information then we are all in trouble. A lot of trouble. The reason being that it means that every bit of (math which apparently one cannot argue with) is bunk. The whole system. The reasoning is simple; if, regardless of coefficient, AA truly captured half your DPS that means your DPS randomly fluctates like a wailing monkey.

But that is okay. An elixer gun’s .4 AA is half your DPS. Well, kitten, how do you ever intend to hit 20k now?

I think the problem with all this “math” and modeling is that you guys just think way too hard. Way too hard.

18k dps with bomb auto attack? It’s the easiest one to measure! You take whatever damage you do in the one second you attack and that’s it. If you do 3k with an AA bomb … your DPS with AA bomb … is 3k. How one manages to get 18k dps with bomb is … ludicrous. It’s literally on a 1s even tick schedule.

bomb auto is .84 sec cast, .56 with quickness. you need about a 10k hit to get 18k dps on bomb autos.

considering i myself have seen 8ks under much worse, nonoptimal circumstances, i wouldnt put that outside of the realm of possibility.

its like you have no idea that dps is not the numbers you see when hitting things on your screen idk.

0.84 second cast? How is this number derived? I know it’s on Wiki but how does someone realistically measure 0.84 second cast time on skill?

Obtena.7952:

0.84 second cast? How is this number derived? I know it’s on Wiki but how does someone realistically measure 0.84 second cast time on skill?

take a video and count the frames.

insanemaniac.2456:

its like you have no idea that dps is not the numbers you see when hitting things on your screen idk.

Actually … it is. The numbers on your screen represent actual events. I played around with this and gave you a lot of leniency and came to the conclusion that you would, in order for this to work, need a minimum require 3,163 power under 100% quickness with 100% crit rate at the highest critical modifier possible in game (which includes Sigil of Cruelty, abilities from other players, specific runes, and some foodstuffs), a steady weapon fixed at maximum, all boons, and an enemy with 2,600 defense to have a shot at this. Just a shot, it’s not guaranteed.

I don’t know; that’s a lot to set-up.

I’m sure you’ll get on that though.

DGraves.3720:

insanemaniac.2456:

its like you have no idea that dps is not the numbers you see when hitting things on your screen idk.

Actually … it is. The numbers on your screen represent actual events. I played around with this and gave you a lot of leniency and came to the conclusion that you would, in order for this to work, need a minimum require 3,163 power under 100% quickness with 100% crit rate at the highest critical modifier possible in game (which includes Sigil of Cruelty, abilities from other players, specific runes, and some foodstuffs), a steady weapon fixed at maximum, all boons, and an enemy with 2,600 defense to have a shot at this. Just a shot, it’s not guaranteed.

I don’t know; that’s a lot to set-up.

I’m sure you’ll get on that though.

oh really, only 3200 power?

perfectly doable. my engi has 2686 and a few of my pieces are assassin. with 25 might and a food i already have 3536, nearly 400 more than “needed”.

but im just gonna ignore

Actually … it is.

this, because it is silly and for as long as you believe it, we will get nowhere and you will continue to write walls upon walls of wrong.

Wahoo!

Obtena.7952:

0.84 second cast? How is this number derived? I know it’s on Wiki but how does someone realistically measure 0.84 second cast time on skill?

Attack with bombs for 5 minutes and count the mobs you used. I did this one myself for all autos and it’s correct.

insanemaniac.2456:

oh really, only 3200 power?

perfectly doable. my engi has 2686 and a few of my pieces are assassin. with 25 might and a food i already have 3536, nearly 400 more than “needed”.

Agreed, it’s even better bro. A full buffed power Engi has 3827 Power and easily 100% Crit Chance.

Greez!
- Ziggy