Guild Wars 2

Well the title speaks for itself. Which stats is better for condi engi – vitality or precision?

Thanks

It’s a question of build. Do you have traits (sharpshooter) and sigils (earth) that will take advantage of the crit? If not, go with dire.

I can only really comment regarding WvW, because that’s where my focus lies. I’ve tossed this question around in my head so many times. I believe going completely dire or rabid is a wrong move. I collect enough toughness and precision from the rabid (1500ish toughness/ 25-35crit chance) and then start equiping Dire.

In theory, I want enough toughness to survive a thief/ mesmer blitz and enough vitality to make me more hearty against condition focused enemies.

Also, my current spec is heavily focused on conditions so after I reach my toughness/precision goal I start stacking the dire because it gives me that boost in power which is nice without sacrificing any condition stacking while doing so.

Exactly what winterstone said.
But you should also consider that you need less precision with grenades and FT since you get so many hits, which results in more chances to crit.

Rabid armor/weapons. Ascended trinkets that are Rabid/Dire (Plague Idol, Matriarch’s Quill, Ralena’s/Vassar’s Band, Master’s Special Serum). That’s what I have used.

Condi is a little weak on its own. So if you aren’t in pvp
try http://youtu.be/lPtLpd7vnPM
celestial nades ftw

i use dire weapons and armor with rabid accessories in wvwvw.

It depends.

I use Dire Armor with Syzygy and +20% MF, with a mix of Carrion, Soldiers, and Rabid trinkets with Soldiers seals for my main build. I would like it more if I can find Dire trinkets on the TP. . .

My set up is relatively weaker with raw damage output but I prefer doing damage over time.
The Dire helps with my survivability and I’ve found that I can tank things. I’ve lead and participated in NA T1 melee trains with it before. It helps with soloing camps and doing dungeons and small group play in PvE.

I’m currently building a full Celestial equipment set to retire my current equipment set.

Last I checked (in December of 2013), the weapon kit completely replaces your weapons’ stats while you are using a kit. Thus the stats on your weapons do not matter at all while using a kit. But your armor and trinkets matter.

You just lose the shield defense bonus that comes with all shields the rest of the stats stay the same if you swap to kit. So you just lose 61 armor for level 80 exotic shield when you swap to kit.

All depends on what I’m running, since I have both.

If I’m running elixirs then I use my dire set with noble runes (Elixir H can give 8 stacks of might), which usually means that I sit at around 1.8K – 2.2K condi damage with 25 corruption + 4-14 stacks of might. It gives me decent durability along with enough condition punch to make P/P without having to use a kit doable.

If I’m feeling cheesy and/or want to run kits then I’ve got my good old set of rabid armour with perplexity runes (mmm cheese). Doesn’t have the durability or the same level of condition punch (it usually sits at around 1.7K condi damage) but it does give me the chance to drop bleed, burn, poison, confusion and torment all in one go fairly often along with bringing all the utilities from tool kit, EH and Bomb kit. Tend to run P/S for this setup.

Just so that I have a decent crit chance to proc bleeds/torment I have full rabid accessories. Weapons are carrion just because they were easier to craft at the time.

For both PVE and WvW I’ve been running Carrion gear and Dire/Rabid trinkets and a 30/30/0/0/10 build with a great amount of success. The precision from the traits and trinkets is more than enough for the amount of grenades I toss out to the world, and the power from Carrion gear is nice when combined with the extra damage per condition trait.

In general, I would only advise taking as much rabid gear to get you to a comfortable level of precision, though it depends on what sort of skill, sigils, and traits you want to use.

I usually grab dire or carrion for my armor, and then some combination of rabid or dire+rabid for the trinkets. I usually end up with enough precision to have about 20%ish crit chance, which can then be boosted by fury. This is usually sufficient for something like grenades and procing incendiary powder.

If you want an on-crit sigil then it might be a bit better to go with more rabid for higher precision.

Rampager is another option, although it’s probably only best if you’re already hybridizing your damage (i.e. carrion gear) and really really need the precision for something specific.

There’s less options in sPvP due to the way the amulets work, so you might just have to go full on rabid there, although you might try a carrion amulet with a rabid jewel.