Guild Wars 2

Hello all together,

I am ready to craft ascended gear and wanted to do this for my engineer, in order to create a conditioneer for raids. I always heard, that I need to reach 100% conditionduration for bleeding and burning, as these are the main conditions of an engineer.

But first i transferred the suggestions from Metabattle
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Condition_Raids
into the Buildeditor
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqalUUhatYfWwELQ7FLpF14PmGlx3GGANAYJuiHAA-TBiHQB6RJI9U/hc6B2lSva9AAK3+DEUZAAOBAkCYRlVA-e

and saw that with this setup I only get 99.4% of conditionduration for bleeding and burning.

Is it enough? According to the Buildeditor the Burnduration (of “Incendiary Ammo” for example) would be doubled. It would also be doubled if I change the stats of the headgear (for example to Sinister) and reduce the conditionduration to 97.4%. Shouldn´t the conditionduration for “Incendiary Ammo” be then at around 5,75 sec? Is there a tollerance and the system just rounds up the duration? But where is then the limit? Or is it just an error of the Buildeditor?

Has anyone tested whether you get as many burn-ticks with 99.4% as with over 100% conditionduration?

Thank you for your answers!

you get “as many” burn ticks, its just that the first one will be a little lower since you dont have duration quite capped.

lets say you use blowtorch on a thing and get one stack of burn on it, and normally your burns tick for 400. in this example, the tooltip damage you would see on blowtorch would be 5964, because its a ~15 sec burn @ 400 / sec. if you had 100% duration the tooltip would read 6000. when you burninate a mob, you see 14 ticks for 400 and then one for 364.

99.4% … is not enough. :p

Huh…

Wahoo!!

It’s the goal to get near 100%. This means is if you have around 95%+ duration, you’ll be just fine.

The tooltip can only display 0.25s but the truth is that the ingame damage will be precisely dealt. This means if you have 95% condi duration and a skill with 1s burn, it will burn for 1.95s even tough the tooltip says 2s.

Btw I’d change that food to the 18% pizza since 2% aren’t really worth 20 silver, unless you are filthy rich. What I do suggest you tough is to play raids and invest your first 600 tokens for a sabby viper back item.

You should also not just use … ugh … Metabattle >_> … blindly. Try to think for yourself and find a better and more efficient way to play. For example:

• Glass Cannon trait is garbage for condi. 5% damage affects only the power part, wich is 20% of your damage. This means this trait is in fact “1% more damage IF you have over 90% HP”.
• Use Grenadier instead, you’ll hit Vale Guardian and Gorseval much easier with those traits. Or moving targets in general. In other aspects of the game, you’ll simply hit more targets easier aswell. Superior trait here.
• Reactive Lenses CAN be swapped to Static Discharge if you know that there are no stuns ahead or you know you will be able to prevent them properly, like in raids.
• Kinetic Battery > Adrenal Implant. You’ll have enough dodges thx to Optimized Activation, so you don’t really need AI. Kinetic Battery on the other hand can greatly improve your survivablity or damage output if you learn to use it properly. It’s acutally the only reason to pick tools over scrapper for a condi engi (and the 15% cdr on toolbelt skills ofc).

Greez!
- Ziggy

For Bleeds, you might think of using the ultra cheap Superior Rune of the Krait.

I’m gonna piggyback on this thread real quick. Is Viper gear worth the added expense? Precision takes a good sized hit, and you lose some condi, to increase power (not your main focus for this build) and gain some condi duration. Since crits is how you proc alot of the bleeds and burn, isn’t this shooting yourself in the foot? Wouldn’t Sinister or Rampager or a mix of the two be better?

This is a question I’ve had for several condi builds, but especially for this one with two traits giving conditions on crits.

Also armor runes: Krait, Balthazar, Berserker, or Nightmare?

bearshaman.3421:

I’m gonna piggyback on this thread real quick. Is Viper gear worth the added expense? Precision takes a good sized hit, and you lose some condi, to increase power (not your main focus for this build) and gain some condi duration. Since crits is how you proc alot of the bleeds and burn, isn’t this shooting yourself in the foot? Wouldn’t Sinister or Rampager or a mix of the two be better?

This is a question I’ve had for several condi builds, but especially for this one with two traits giving conditions on crits.

Also armor runes: Krait, Balthazar, Berserker, or Nightmare?

Thing is, condition duration food (what we used to use to get the condition duration up to the cap before HoT) was cut by 50%. So now, we have to use the condition duration gear to boost our condition duration.

bearshaman.3421:

I’m gonna piggyback on this thread real quick. Is Viper gear worth the added expense? Precision takes a good sized hit, and you lose some condi, to increase power (not your main focus for this build) and gain some condi duration. Since crits is how you proc alot of the bleeds and burn, isn’t this shooting yourself in the foot? Wouldn’t Sinister or Rampager or a mix of the two be better?

This is a question I’ve had for several condi builds, but especially for this one with two traits giving conditions on crits.

Also armor runes: Krait, Balthazar, Berserker, or Nightmare?

sinister or viper are worth it. rampager isnt, unless youre on an extreme budget and hate farming and about 3 other excuses.

napalm specialist needs about 25%+ crit rate to work fine. viper gear has more than that. the reason for this is its a fairly long cd with a 100% proc rate. you dont need a whole lot of crits, you just want to be sure you crit within the first couple attacks.

sharpshooter always benefits from more crit but doesnt add much damage even at 100% crit. the base bleed duration is simply too short. its significant, but it isnt something you ought to build around, because its dwarfed by a thing moving out of your fire fields or any number of other sources of error.

berserker with viper or 4 nightmare / 2 trapper with full sinister. you wont need as much duration as krait or balth give, and using one of those means you wont be able to max out both bleed and burn duration.

You’ll still have 86% crit chance in a party due to spotter, banner and fury. So worry not about your crit ratio.

The thing is: Condition duration is a flat damage increase in . From 0 to 50% condition duration makes you 50% stronger. From 50% to 100% makes you another 25% stronger. That’s insane compared to the damage you’d gain from additional raw stats (condi dmg).

Greez!

bearshaman.3421:

I’m gonna piggyback on this thread real quick. Is Viper gear worth the added expense?

No.

Precision takes a good sized hit, and you lose some condi, to increase power (not your main focus for this build) and gain some condi duration. Since crits is how you proc alot of the bleeds and burn, isn’t this shooting yourself in the foot?

Yes.

Wouldn’t Sinister or Rampager or a mix of the two be better?

Now that is a good question. I don’t know off-hand. It depends on what you’re doing with traits and strategy.

This is a question I’ve had for several condi builds, but especially for this one with two traits giving conditions on crits.

Also armor runes: Krait, Balthazar, Berserker, or Nightmare?

It depends on which condition you intend to focus on. If you’re running something to stack bleeds like a madman, Krait, if they are equivalent in stacking speed however, Balthazar, Berserker should never be taken for condition damage builds because it only adds condition damage and condition damage is double reduced so all additions that are percentages take two individual hits. Nightmare … I personally prefer to stick to a plan but you could take trapper/nightmare.

As for the crit element and question it’s not an easy answer. It truly depends on what you intend to do all the way throughout; if you are playing solo or pug I recommend bringing your own crit rather than waiting or hoping someone has it for you but if you are playing organized teams or raids or whatever then you can just forget about it.

On that note condition duration is always better than condition damage prior to a certain point; if you specialize or focus a specific condition (I.E. Rune of the Krait for bleeding) you will always do better taking Sinister’s and if you do not you will always do better taking Viper’s. It’s just that simple.

Since I personally solo/pug my advice comes from that behavior. I really don’t even know what I will get or who I will end up next to. If it’s your bros though disregard this entirely.

hmm

when you put on full viper, you get enough condi duration to max it out without dedicating your runes to it. so you then pick berserker runes simply because they offer the most damage of all the condi rune sets.

when you have 0 expertise, maxing out condi duration is no less important for that style of condi build, so the most efficient rune for doing that is 4 nightmare / 2 trapper.

condi pve engi should not take balth or krait runes because you would then focus too much on 1 condi and lose out on both types of damage (overcapping 1, undercapping another). ((unless youre just getting started on engi, but it shouldnt be your ultimate goal))

insanemaniac.2456:

when you put on full viper, you get enough condi duration to max it out without dedicating your runes to it. so you then pick berserker runes simply because they offer the most damage of all the condi rune sets.

this

Thanks for the advice. Much appreciated. I do mostly find myself in pugs or solo as opposed to highly organized groups. The condi build will primarily be for higher level fractals where (Ive been told) the bosses tend to have escalating toughness, and condi becomes highly desired. and the occasional WB.

insanemaniac.2456:

hmm

when you put on full viper, you get enough condi duration to max it out without dedicating your runes to it. so you then pick berserker runes simply because they offer the most damage of all the condi rune sets.

when you have 0 expertise, maxing out condi duration is no less important for that style of condi build, so the most efficient rune for doing that is 4 nightmare / 2 trapper.

condi pve engi should not take balth or krait runes because you would then focus too much on 1 condi and lose out on both types of damage (overcapping 1, undercapping another). ((unless youre just getting started on engi, but it shouldnt be your ultimate goal))

Krait gives an extra bleed on hit. The 5% boost to condition duration is useless in comparison. As a long-time user I’m always pleased when it triggers. Using anything with more utility than stats is always preferable because stat gain from sigils is naturally mediocre.

You only get 175 + 5% so with full Viper’s you not only get less overall condition damage but get basically nothing from the runes themselves towards a condition build. The gain on burning does not make up for this since Engineers have so few sources to begin with and they typically are just so short when weighted against their cooldowns.

Strategically speaking getting an extra stack in when you’re hit is worth more than 5% when you have a higher base. Perhaps I’m old school but I am a firm believer in not diversifying and playing to my strengths; engineers produce far more bleeds than burns and do so far easier.