Guild Wars 2

I just want to hear your thoughts about burn vs bleed, including combos and total dmg you can get out of it. Which one would one would have highest dmg? take in consideration traits condition dmg calculations etc (how about condition + toughness + rune of the undead + 200 toughness from flamethower trait). Also the sigils such as:
sigil of strenght (to provide more stacks of might)
sigil of earth (nice 60% after crit for bleed)
sigil of fire (would that fire stack in duration? dmg?)
sigil of accuracy (would it be better to have more % CHC?)
any other?
Also, I know that sigils would affect the use of flamethrower kit. I’m sorry if I sound noob but I want to know if the weapon’s condition/precision would also affect the dmg/crit of the flamethrower skills (I know power wont affect it at all, am I right?)
I know the bugs on flamethrower but still Im trying to see surviability and dmg output, condition dmg, etc

In my humble opinion the Engineer Pistol (our Bleed stacking weapon) just ain’t cut for stacking any good chuck of Bleeding on anything! The 2 second’s it last (without longer duration buffs) just ain’t enough to really create a good bleeding damage build! At least not for anything in a duel or WvW roaming perspective!
I am tho, looking into a AoE Bleeding with a Grenade kit setup at the given time, but don’t have anything to show off atm. For Bleeding setup we need a lot of crit chance, to use Sharpshooter and sigil to their full, but even then, there is a CD on how often a bleeding tick can happen. But anyway, you got Pistol 1 = 2 sec Bleed, Sharshooter = 30% chance on crit to cause Bleeding, then you can put in a grenade kit for Shrapnel (15% chance to cause bleeding on explosive’s) and get 3x Stacks of bleeding from the skill 2 there. It begin to stack up nice, and on the same time you can stack a lot of Vulnerability in AoE! But then again, it’s probably only worth it in PvE og WvW Zerg / Siege’s

Burning on the other hand, we got several ability’s, with good steady duration on, and low CD, making us able to perma burn a single target, and in PvE easy stack it on several mobs. We got Blowtorch, Rocket Boot’s Tool belt, Flamethrower, Bomb kit’s Flame bomb, 33% chance on crit to inflect burning trait, 20% longer burning duration trait. The burning setup I used could easy stack 20-30 sec’s of burning, with low CD spell’s so you could just spam it. And on the same time I still got Sharpshooter and used the pistol auto attack, and since I used a lot of longer condition damage duration both for burning and my confusion, your able to stack up some bleeding a as well.

I think what I’m trying to say is, the you shouldn’t just focus on bleeding as an engineer xD We got easy aces to burning (probably the beast in the game actually) and confusion as well, so your better off using several different condition’s instead of just one!
You can see my build for that here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Drakeco-s-PvP-Video-s-15-01-New-Movie-out/first#post1208132

and sadly no, weapon stat’s ain’t working for kit’s yet!

ok Bro, ur the man, we are synced, you even said the skills I was aware of to make some pretty nice burning.
I already thought about the nice dmg rocket boot’s tool belt has, I also thought about the bomb kit’s flame bomb, and as well the other things u mentioned.
I read your builds but I would like to share some things that I’ve been thinking, yet to try it out. Now for the facts.
1. Armor: Rabid’s (Condition / Precision / Toughness)
2. Rune: rune of the undead
3. weapon: Precision / Condition / Power
4. Sigil: Sigil of Strenght
5. Accesories: Condition / Precision / Toughness

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcUQFAUl0p6Z37SrF17ISoHS49JYgeAY41d9pAbB;TcAqmMNJay2krJZTjMA

I want to make use of combos and include them into battle. in order to use em I realized that the best use for them would be flamethrower + rifle (Napalm aka flame wall). If we use Flamethrower + Bomb kit + rifle we can get many combos such as jump stealth, area stealth bomb, Area Might, Fire Aura, Fire bullets. Also I came to think two possible options as for sigils, sigil of earth or sigil of strenght (I think this one fits better). Using rabid’s armor (condition precision toughness) you increase the burning condition dmg a lot, as well the critical chance for extra burning with the 33% trait + sigil of stenght for extra might and the Juggernaut trait together to stack up. Not to mention the medkit’s stimulant for more crit chance. The weakness I find is the short range but it can be solved by having medkits swiftness + rifle jumpshot in order to reduce distance, also u get very nice bombos such as the Fire Aura and Fire Bullets. As for the bombs, Im still not sure about it, you need close distance for it, but u can use it for kiting, you can get nice combos out of it (Area Stealth + dmg, and Area Might + Blast burning which is hard to pull with the Big bomb). You get nice CC with the glue bomb + overcharged shot + net shot + Crate’s stun + air blast. You are tankish, nice toughness along with the rune of the undead and all the bonuses that mix pretty well with everything (traits + flamethrower + armor, etc). You have some power which goes nice with your rifle and syncs with your trait (Energized armor).

I still think the better is to have rifle for more CC and the use of combos (Jumpshot: Stealth and Fire aura). Also because you can make really nice combination of moves to control and burst an opponent (Jumpshot is a very powerful skill if you trigger the fire aura to get extra burning + double dmg). Blunderbuss for a very nice crit + bleeding as well activation of might (sigil) and the 33% burning.

I also thought about using Rocket Turet, provided that I have the Invention trait maxed, and think before time to get a very nice CC, like this: 1. activate overcharge on your rocket turret (you know the missile will take a lil till it fires and reaches ur target) 2. hit ur opponent with overcharged shot (he will be knocked down) 3. if the missile didn’t reach him and hes about to get up fire a net shot 4. fire napalm on him 5. jumpshot land on him and receive the combo fire aura for extra burn and hit blunderbuss switch to FT and keep hitting. This is just an idea, the problem is that he might take my turret down fast, or not.

Idk if you could give it a try and prolly make I vid, I saw your vids are pretty cool. Maybe you can get something out of this idea and polish it a lil bit more to get something awesome.

(Question: ok Power wont affect when ur switching to Flamethrower, but what about if you have shield… would you still get the toughness from it? what if I use: “reinforced shield”?)

You can contact me in game to chat more about this, I love engs and I think there are some really powerful stuff with FT and condition dmg.

Burn damage is equivalent of 6 stack of bleed.
With sharpshooter(30% bleed for 3 sec)+ superior sigil of earth(66% bleed for 5 sec , 2 sec cd)+ #1 pistol(100% bleed for 2 sec) and an hypothetical 100% crit chance in 10 seconds you will have a costant 4 bleed from pistol + 2 hypothetical costant bleed from sharpshooter + 1-2 stack of bleed from sigil that’s 7-8 stack of bleed per second. That’s with 100% crit rate, with less crit chance you will still have the 4 bleed from pistol#1 but less bleed on proc; every time you use a skill is 1 less bleed from pistol #1 even if pisto #2 shoot 5 bullet in 1,75 second that will give you more chance to proc bleed(and apply poison that do double the damage of bleed) but still lose the #1 base bleed, and the aim of that skill is worse the farther your target is.
Incendiary powder(explosive V) have a 33% chance to burn for 2 sec(3 sec cd) that’s is worth 12 bleeding tic every 3 second that mean ~4 costant bleed and can proc with every attack and don’t exclude sharpshooter or the sigil of earth.
Cond damage boost both equally, i mean that the proportion 1:6 remain no matter how many cond damage you’ve got, the same apply to might because might give 35 power and cond damage x stack(of might).
Another thing bleed suffer from the 25 cap(that’s a problem only if you use the granade kit with shrapnel).
I used for some time a build using FT and condition damage + might, and was not that bad because i can reach easily 12+ stack of might and my burn tic for more than 700 each second(FT has 5 attack x second than have a good chance to proc condition on crit), ~100 each bleed and ~1500 over 2 second direct damage(depending on the armor of the target).

Let’s put it this way: they are almost equal, but with burning you need less backup stuff: less traits, no need for crit chance (at least in builds with p/p, bomb kit and rocket boots) and no need to apply it constantly. That’s why is handier: you deal same damage as bleeding, but you can do other things while it ticks. And this means a lot, expecially in dynamic fights like spvp.

This also means you can use both in a condition build

Wow Atamaz very very useful information… so now I can see Burn wins over bleed. What do you think about the proposal for the build that I explained? you have CC from glue bomb, overcharged shot, net, crate’s stun, nice combos (stealth, fire aura, fire bullets), and of course lots of fire. Rune of the undead syncs very well with everything else to get more cond dmg + more tankish. Anything you guys think would be better for this build?

It’s a fascinating build setup Naioby, and I might try It out when I’m done working on my current projects!! Tho, it is a very complicated one to play, and your gotta be fast on your finger’s to get maximum use out of everything!
I think I would use this setup instead:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcUQFAUl0p6Z37SrF1LJyoCdWIFSI+B6BghX31nCsFA;TcAqmMNJay2krJZTjMA
Mostly cause I like to have some swiftness when I run around!

Yeah speedy kits looks very nice in order to reduce distance and sometimes, flee. Problem is we need some calculation to see how many condition points we are loosing since we are using the rune of undead, having inventions maxed gives +300 toughness, versus having 20 points in inventions gives +200 toughness which gives a difference of 100 toughness, then the rune of undead says 5% of toughness, we originally had 1266 toughness (as in the example) which gave us 63 condition points (with the rune of the undead 6th bonus), having 20 point in inventions makes 1166 toughness resulting on 58 condition points. Now the question is how much would that influence? would it be much difference in burning dmg? or it isnt that remarkable. We might also get the “power shoes” from inventions giving 10% faster movement during combat. Also cloaking device, I thought about it, but I mean, if its stun, seems it wont apply, since I read wiki didn’t include stun as “immobilized”, and if someone, for example, throws a net on us, he for sure knows we are there, enough to keep shooting, so, not sure if its good to use that trait (cloaking device). But I might be wrong, I think it is something to test.

The truth is in between, you need both, if you want to do some decent condition damage and add some poison and confusion while you’re at it.
Builds depend mainly if pve, pvp or wvw oriented.
In pve everything is lecit, you can even run naked with just speedy kit and invigorating speed dodging around.
For exemple, bomb kit can be very good in pve because mob are stupid and you can just put bomb under theyr feet and they won’t care; in s/tpvp bomb kit is also good in bunker build because your aim is to take control of a point and maintain it for the longer time you can, then most of fights will take place in restricted place, the ideal place for bombs, in wvw bombs are pretty terrible unless you’re crazy enough to jump in the middle of the enemies zerg to spam bomb until death comes and even in minor skirmish there’s a lot of movement and the delayed nature of bombs is nice if you’re followed by enemies but bad to follow them.
FT can be nice in pve but in pvp/wvw is used mostly for utility because #1 is not a targeted skill but aim at the middle of the monitor and may be tricky hitting target in moviment (unless it’s running straight forward in front of you).
And i know you like your rifle for the jump finisher and the net but if you want to go condition pistol is the way, p/p is better, but be sure to take some defensive skill if you’re going in pvp/wvw.

The thing I have found that makes it VERY hard for me to get away from as an Engineer is that we can do significant burn damage with significant duration in just a few moves, and we don’t even have to spec for condition damage at all for it to be useful.

The downside to burn, outside of incendiary powder, is needing to be close to get the best effect.

Cloaking device saves me about 1 time in 3 it applies in WvW and about 1 time in 3 it wouldn’t have made a difference because the immobilize was because I was in the area and not because I was the target. It has probably saved me from becoming a target in those situations. Having it kick in during stun would be silly OP. I wish it did that.

To me the Engineer isn’t the master of Bleeding or even necessarily Burning, but it’s a master of dumping conditions like a thick gravy over the opponents until their condition bar is a beacon of red light.

We have Bleeding, but we can’t apply it that thickly. We have Burning and are even one of the best at applying it, but it isn’t enough damage on it’s own. We have Poison and again are one of the best at applying it, but the primary purpose of this is anti-healing and not the damage. We have Confusion and again are one of the best at applying it, but it can be unreliable in it’s damage output. All of these powers combined give us incredible sustained condition damage output that makes it difficult to regenerate and causes action use to be heavily penalized.

Not to mention, one of the biggest difficulties in dealing with our condition builds is they often supplement it with a slew of control conditions. Heck, the build I use can apply literally every condition to someone in the game. Even Fear through Nightmare Runes and Weakness through the Poison Blast combo. It’s not uncommon for someone to have far more then six conditions on them from me, and they are incredibly easy to reapply. If their condition wipes only clear off one, two, or three at a time then they aren’t going to get anything done at all.

I’ve tried the condition builds of other professions. It’s just not the same. The unholy union of all the damage conditions assisted by multiple control conditions gives us incredible damage output and utility. That and Blind is probably my favorite condition in the game and we have a ton of it on very short cooldowns.

ok one question, if I go double pistols… and I add 2 sigil of strenght is there anywhere confirmed that I will get 30% after crit to cast might, or would it be 51%? (I saw someone talking about it) but… anywhere confirmed? real formula? else I might just combine sigil of strenght + sigil of fire.
btw, what would be a good replace for bomb kit? rocket turret = too slow cd, flame turret = too short range, rifle turret = nice overcharge to add bleeding charges, but squishy, tool kit = uhmmm magnet O_o box of nails (bleeding) throw wrench…

aydenunited.5729:

The thing I have found that makes it VERY hard for me to get away from as an Engineer is that we can do significant burn damage with significant duration in just a few moves, and we don’t even have to spec for condition damage at all for it to be useful.

I agree with this completely. In fact, I ran a build based on burn duration, rather than damage, and noticed a far greater damage outcome than when I was spec’d for cond damage alone. Having a trait within the precision tree for 20% duration was an easy pickup, not to mention all of the +burn duration runes and sigils are cheap. 2xrunes of flame legion, 2x runes of baelfire, 2x runes of balthazar= +45% burn…with trait =65%….with sigil of smoldering=75%…with power tree built up 20 points =95% burn duration…with super veggie pizza I believe I was around 130-140% burn duration. It could easily be argued to run with +cond duration runes and then pick up the burn duration sigil and trait as a kicker. I ran p/p with sigil of fire in addition to the sigil of smoldering. In the power tree I also picked the trait with 33% chance burn on crit. Between the sigil procs, trait procs, and natural burn abilities I was easily able to stack 15-20 seconds of burn on people. My typical utilites were flamethrower, rocket boots, and either an elixir or toolkit. I am not a fan of flamethrower in general but it added to the ability to add burns so I kept it. Not to mention it was fun rocket kicking in and then venting the exhaust to blind right when I reached the target. All in all, I found more rewards from burn applications than bleed but it also felt like a more specific build than the bleed one. It also felt easier to apply bleeds in an AOE fashion than I could with burns. I guess this would mainly be the case because of nades and there ability to spread bleeds to groups with relative ease. Flamethrower was an AOE burn spreader and if it’s bugs weren’t so prevelant I could see it really becoming a premier applier of crit based conditions in general.

Sigil’s that give an effect on a Critical strike don’t stack They all have an internal CD they share, so it’s only worth having one of them!
Don’t be scared of using the Bomb Kit in WvW if your a roamer or do stuff in a small group, else the Grenade Kit and Tool Kit are both great kit’s for a CC setup, the one more offensive than the other! Grenade kit got more Poison, Freeze and Bleeding (The Bleeding from grenade skill got insane duration), while Toolkit give you move Confusion, some bleeding, but both magnet and shield which are great tools for PvP

Kai.3680:

aydenunited.5729:

The thing I have found that makes it VERY hard for me to get away from as an Engineer is that we can do significant burn damage with significant duration in just a few moves, and we don’t even have to spec for condition damage at all for it to be useful.

I agree with this completely. In fact, I ran a build based on burn duration, rather than damage, and noticed a far greater damage outcome than when I was spec’d for cond damage alone. Having a trait within the precision tree for 20% duration was an easy pickup, not to mention all of the +burn duration runes and sigils are cheap. 2xrunes of flame legion, 2x runes of baelfire, 2x runes of balthazar= +45% burn…with trait =65%….with sigil of smoldering=75%…with power tree built up 20 points =95% burn duration…with super veggie pizza I believe I was around 130-140% burn duration. It could easily be argued to run with +cond duration runes and then pick up the burn duration sigil and trait as a kicker. I ran p/p with sigil of fire in addition to the sigil of smoldering. In the power tree I also picked the trait with 33% chance burn on crit. Between the sigil procs, trait procs, and natural burn abilities I was easily able to stack 15-20 seconds of burn on people. My typical utilites were flamethrower, rocket boots, and either an elixir or toolkit. I am not a fan of flamethrower in general but it added to the ability to add burns so I kept it. Not to mention it was fun rocket kicking in and then venting the exhaust to blind right when I reached the target. All in all, I found more rewards from burn applications than bleed but it also felt like a more specific build than the bleed one. It also felt easier to apply bleeds in an AOE fashion than I could with burns. I guess this would mainly be the case because of nades and there ability to spread bleeds to groups with relative ease. Flamethrower was an AOE burn spreader and if it’s bugs weren’t so prevelant I could see it really becoming a premier applier of crit based conditions in general.

Sounds nice but I have a question, you could apply long duration burns and that sounds reallly great more than 20 secs of burn, but, what about those professions that can easily remove condition? wouldn’t it be better to apply burns that does more dmg instead? I started to think about sigil of strenght + sigil of earth and then add runes to add “Might” duration and with the FT u already get 6 might, you can stack up to 25 might and that is, as wiki says:
“With 25 stacks of might at level 80, the bonus is +875 Power and Condition Damage.”
which is a great bonus for everything. Do you agree? or is there any other advantage about duration I’m not seeing? guardians, eles, even engis and thieves with traits to transform conditions into boons can easily remove conditions right?

having recently started dabbling into the engineer (and enjoying it) I felt the flamethrower is more for “up-close combat” but the elixir gun has the bleed that can stack at a safe distance. is it a good idea/viable to use both a flamethrower and an elixir gun or is there a better alternative to build up bleed stacks?

Naioby.3705:

Kai.3680:

aydenunited.5729:

The thing I have found that makes it VERY hard for me to get away from as an Engineer is that we can do significant burn damage with significant duration in just a few moves, and we don’t even have to spec for condition damage at all for it to be useful.

I agree with this completely. In fact, I ran a build based on burn duration, rather than damage, and noticed a far greater damage outcome than when I was spec’d for cond damage alone. Having a trait within the precision tree for 20% duration was an easy pickup, not to mention all of the +burn duration runes and sigils are cheap. 2xrunes of flame legion, 2x runes of baelfire, 2x runes of balthazar= +45% burn…with trait =65%….with sigil of smoldering=75%…with power tree built up 20 points =95% burn duration…with super veggie pizza I believe I was around 130-140% burn duration. It could easily be argued to run with +cond duration runes and then pick up the burn duration sigil and trait as a kicker. I ran p/p with sigil of fire in addition to the sigil of smoldering. In the power tree I also picked the trait with 33% chance burn on crit. Between the sigil procs, trait procs, and natural burn abilities I was easily able to stack 15-20 seconds of burn on people. My typical utilites were flamethrower, rocket boots, and either an elixir or toolkit. I am not a fan of flamethrower in general but it added to the ability to add burns so I kept it. Not to mention it was fun rocket kicking in and then venting the exhaust to blind right when I reached the target. All in all, I found more rewards from burn applications than bleed but it also felt like a more specific build than the bleed one. It also felt easier to apply bleeds in an AOE fashion than I could with burns. I guess this would mainly be the case because of nades and there ability to spread bleeds to groups with relative ease. Flamethrower was an AOE burn spreader and if it’s bugs weren’t so prevelant I could see it really becoming a premier applier of crit based conditions in general.

Sounds nice but I have a question, you could apply long duration burns and that sounds reallly great more than 20 secs of burn, but, what about those professions that can easily remove condition? wouldn’t it be better to apply burns that does more dmg instead? I started to think about sigil of strenght + sigil of earth and then add runes to add “Might” duration and with the FT u already get 6 might, you can stack up to 25 might and that is, as wiki says:
“With 25 stacks of might at level 80, the bonus is +875 Power and Condition Damage.”
which is a great bonus for everything. Do you agree? or is there any other advantage about duration I’m not seeing? guardians, eles, even engis and thieves with traits to transform conditions into boons can easily remove conditions right?

Stacking might is much more effective in PvE, not as much in sPvP. I’ve run so many might stacking specs it’s ridiculous, and the sad truth I’ve found, in my humble opinion, is that it only works if you’re part of a group and nobody is paying attention to the Engineer laying down steady heavy hit fire, and that’s usually not the case.

The thing about condition removal on our burn specs is how quickly we can re-apply, and then going back to the original topic, we don’t have to sacrifice much to get high quality burn damage, we’re still putting out decent normal damage in the meantime. So unlike a Necro, where a condition removal build nullifies their use, we can still lay down a decent amount.

You also have to remember, in terms of sPvP, when you combine kit refinement with any of our “on heal” Runes + medikit, you significantly unlock a lot of the damage potential of the Engineer at melee-ish range.

Moskibear.3482:

having recently started dabbling into the engineer (and enjoying it) I felt the flamethrower is more for “up-close combat” but the elixir gun has the bleed that can stack at a safe distance. is it a good idea/viable to use both a flamethrower and an elixir gun or is there a better alternative to build up bleed stacks?

There is a build I’m working on currently that works both into the mix. And considering that with Kit Refinement, the swap to FT kit and EG kit both remove a condition, makes it even more viable.

Ayden has the right of it, reapplication of burns is really very easy. Not to mention people panic when they see they are burning because it is a very damaging condition. So they will often blow there condition removals quickly which leaves optimal opportunity to reapply. I found running with sigil of fire, burn duration, and the trait to cause burns on crit to apply burns often enough to have a constant stack. EG synergizes well with flame thrower since it helps apply more conditions while also having defensive qualities and many traits pair the two together

aydenunited.5729:

Moskibear.3482:

having recently started dabbling into the engineer (and enjoying it) I felt the flamethrower is more for “up-close combat” but the elixir gun has the bleed that can stack at a safe distance. is it a good idea/viable to use both a flamethrower and an elixir gun or is there a better alternative to build up bleed stacks?

There is a build I’m working on currently that works both into the mix. And considering that with Kit Refinement, the swap to FT kit and EG kit both remove a condition, makes it even more viable.

Ahh thanks :-) I was thinking about this build myself, but I am not sure if the points in explosives might be overkill or not and those points are better spent elsewhere? not entirely sure how much duration is needed in condition based builds. thanks in advance for the feedback.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAEGJA9o+19uiUg5G/RBbnPA

EDIT: just ignore my weapon choices and other things, only went into the traits for now :-) my bad

Ideal condition duration is about 6 seconds. 10 max.

Anything over that will be lost due to allied stacking, cleansing, or dead targets.

I guess it would also depend on who you are running with and if it is pve, pvp, or wvw that you are participating in. 6-10 sounds right as its rare that you would not have one of those situations pointed out by Casia happen. I go for longer durations not to stack it on single targets but so that when using AOE I can try to get longer durations on groups. For burns, you can’t always apply them exactly the same way with exactly the same duration. When all my skills are off cooldown I have the opportunity to apply the burns with the greatest frequency and greatest overall duration to a group, not just a single target. If I wind up stacking 20 seconds of burn on someone and they drop it, fine. The point is, if i only get half hits from dodging/blocking, the remaining stack will still be decent. I haven’t looked far enough into the mechanics of condition application to know if I am being overly redundent or not.

For your build, I personally wouldn’t go that far into power but thats really just my choice. I would take out the extra 10 in power and put it either into the alchemy tree or the tools tree. However, I get my condition duration from a sigil and runes. If you were looking for help from the explosives tree then by all means go for it. I just can’t get away from how useful both the tools and alchemy tree are. Ayden mentioned above how you can drop conditions with both the kit refinement of the FT and EG. What should be noted on this is you can drop conditions even when feared, immobilized, etc due to the nature of kit refinement. Really a nice feature.

Thanks for the feedback both of you, was always wondering. I am not too fond of the explosives tree, mainly took it for that burn chance and the condition duration, I think I may stick the remaining points in alchemy to get the elixir might trait, I’ll do some research on it.

As long as you are using 2 elixirs, then HGH is worth it. Extended duration Might stacking isn’t really so great in my opinion for sPvP, since as someone mentioned earlier it takes too long to really get running. HGH and Sigil of Battle though, they can easily get you to around 15 stacks of might in a pretty short order and stay there. That can be pretty significant.

Going deep in Explosives is pretty much a Grenadier only thing. Otherwise 10 to 20 points is more then enough. I would say though, even if you aren’t a fan of Grenades that you should give them a try. Runes of Nightmare plus the 30% duration from Explosives gives you +50% to all of your conditions in duration. That means if you land all of your grenades on a Freeze Volley it’ll last for 9 seconds, which is absolutely killer if they lack condition removal. Since you often cover up that Chill pretty quickly with Vuln, Poison, and Bleed (just from the Grenade Kit) it is also pretty difficult to get rid of without a full condition wipe. Poison and Chill combined are one of the keys to dealing with Bunker builds. The Blind Grenades are excellent when you are Immobilized and are being hit form the back, while Shrapnel Grenades are just great damage and the bleeds last forever.

Beyond that, reaching +50% duration with everything just makes Pistols and Bomb conditions that much better too. Blowtorch for example can burn for 9 seconds, which can be easily over 7000 damage. Also the ability to back off a point and lob grenades from afar gives you a way to fight without feeling useless while you are low on health. Not to mention, the Power coefficients on many of the Pistol skills alongside the Grenade skills give you a lot of direct damage. It’s not uncommon for Poison Volley to do over 2.5k damage for me, as an example. That may not be earth shattering, but when combined with every damage condition in the book alongside Retaliation it becomes significant.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-VRR;2Z;0h0u5NQFx0;9;5T9T;253B0;017A;1aZ;4dZm9fRk09Fk

WvW build with a mix of rabid&carrion.

0/30/10/30/0 P+P
Elixir H / Elixir B / Elixir S / Elixir C / Crate

Health 18,832 (without armor)
Toughness 1,814 (without armor)
Bleeding Duration 55% (without food)
Condition Damage 1,050 (without food or Sigil)
Healing Power 669

Runes of nightmare are awesome for building duration. Don’t forget food! That alone can jump your durations up significantly. I cannot argue the effectiveness of grenades. Despite all the bickering people do on this forum about feeling useful it is hard to not feel effective when using grenades well. Few classes can apply such a consistent volley of artillery that also stacks some great conditions. Chill cannot be underestimated as it is often the only way to effectively deal with dual dagger elementalists, thieves, and any significant bunker build. Outside of staff ele AOE I haven’t seen any other class than can hold back a zerg as well as a couple grenade launching engineers. I personally run rifle with my grenade build just to have a more frequent immobilize for grenade barrage…which does huge damage when planned well. In addition, steel packed powder minor trait with grenadier major trait and utility goggles means you can spread decent stacks of vuln on multiple targets and huge stacks on singles. Shrapnel grenades combined with a rune of earth and the shrapnel major trait and minor trait in precision for bleed on crit just gives overkill stacks of bleed. Building the explosives tree also gives you access to improvements to the bomb kit which makes Orr go from being incredibly annoying to bomberman fun times. Everything is going to chase you anyway so you might as well have an infinite trail of bombs combing out from behind you.

Cempa.5619:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-VRR;2Z;0h0u5NQFx0;9;5T9T;253B0;017A;1aZ;4dZm9fRk09Fk

WvW build with a mix of rabid&carrion.

0/30/10/30/0 P+P
Elixir H / Elixir B / Elixir S / Elixir C / Crate

Health 18,832 (without armor)
Toughness 1,814 (without armor)
Bleeding Duration 55% (without food)
Condition Damage 1,050 (without food or Sigil)
Healing Power 669

I just realized a problem with the build: Pizza is 40% and my base is 55% Bleed duration so I am 5% short :/ Its 50% and 100% for the extra ticks right?

Yeah it’s 50% and 100% for a 3s and 4s bleed on Explosive Shot.

Is there a cap on condition duration? It looks as if there is not a difference no matter how much higher above 100% total bleed duration. It seems that anything more than that is just a waste of either runes or traits/

It has appeared that +100% is the cap. I’ve never seen any data supporting anything higher at all.

Tooltips don’t update properly for many conditions. test it, dont rely on them.

Yeah because I have +45% bleed rune combo, +36% condition duration from pizza, +30% condition duration from traits which totals to +111% bleed duration. My eruption (normally 12s bleed) caps at 20 for tooltip (which is wrong) and loads 24s of bleed onto the target, but it should be ~= 25.25s. And if I put on a trait that increases my bleed duration by another 20% nothing happens.

It’s not that bad because instead of +20% additional bleeding i can have -20% cd but is still kind of disappointing.

So I haven’t tested this but condition duration is measured in 1/4 sec increments and ANet has said they round. So you should need to get to 2+7/8ths seconds of bleed to round up to 3. This happens at + 45% condition duration. 2s with + 95% condition duration is 3.9s which is greater than the 3.875s needed for rounding.

As I said no idea if that’s actually how it works but that is how it has been stated to work.

Cempa.5619:

Cempa.5619:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-VRR;2Z;0h0u5NQFx0;9;5T9T;253B0;017A;1aZ;4dZm9fRk09Fk

WvW build with a mix of rabid&carrion.

0/30/10/30/0 P+P
Elixir H / Elixir B / Elixir S / Elixir C / Crate

Health 18,832 (without armor)
Toughness 1,814 (without armor)
Bleeding Duration 55% (without food)
Condition Damage 1,050 (without food or Sigil)
Healing Power 669

I just realized a problem with the build: Pizza is 40% and my base is 55% Bleed duration so I am 5% short :/ Its 50% and 100% for the extra ticks right?

Whenever I tested it, it always rounded down. I haven’t done so in awhile though.

Ayestes.1273:

Blowtorch for example can burn for 9 seconds, which can be easily over 7000 damage. Also the ability to back off a point and lob grenades from afar gives you a way to fight without feeling useless while you are low on health. Not to mention, the Power coefficients on many of the Pistol skills alongside the Grenade skills give you a lot of direct damage. It’s not uncommon for Poison Volley to do over 2.5k damage for me, as an example. That may not be earth shattering, but when combined with every damage condition in the book alongside Retaliation it becomes significant.

I’m wondering is right? I mean… as far as I know, burns stacks on duration, not dmg and you are saying 7000 dmg from stacking burns. Am I missing something that I’m not getting about condition duration? or is there any dif between burn duration vs condition duration? how can u get that 7000 dmg from stacks if burns only stacks duration? thanks

I believe he means after the burn is completed it would be 7000 damage

Maxing out condition damage, bleeds will be toughly 125 and burn 750ish. Those numbers are not dead on but I rounded for simplicity.

That means you have to stack 6 stacks of bleeds to equal 1 damage tick of burn. In other words 6 stacks of bleeds for 7 seconds is required to do the equivalent amount of damage as burn stacked for 9 seconds.

ohhhh ok I got it thanks for the info

Yeah coglin has it right. The damage numbers were taken from my build, which would have a x3 3s burns which would add over 6k damage and about a 1k direct damage hit from the Blowtorch.

The reason we can’t stack Bleeding as well as other profession is because we have such good access to the Burning. That being said, our ability to stack bleeds is probably a little too low because of that, especially in our Explosive Shot and Shrapnel concepts. The theory still holds though, that we won’t ever be able to Bleed as well as a Necro.