Guild Wars 2

hello folks, thanks for reading.

i realize this is probably an obnoxious question that gets asked a lot, but i can’t seem to find a really helpful source…

as the title says, i’m headed to raid on sunday with my engi who will be filling the role of condi dps, using the current meta build (http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Condition_Raids).

the dps rotation section is where i’m getting a little hung up:

DPS Rotation:
Engineer has a lot of skills, the DPS rotation depends heavily on your alacrity uptime. Though the general idea of a good engineer rotation can be boiled down to using your highest damaging skills off cooldown.

Priority Skills
– Incendiary Ammo
– Napalm
– Fire Bomb
– Blowtorch
– Grenade Barrage
– Shrapnel Grenade
Use these skills whenever they recharge.

While these skills are on cooldown you can rotate between weaker condition skills
– Poison Grenade
– Poison Dart Volley
– Concussion Bomb
– Static Shot
– Poison Gas Shell
Lastly use your grenade auto-attack to fill in the gaps.
– Grenade

i understand the concept of keeping up certain priority skills, but some moves’ CD seem too short to even rotate out of (Shrapnel Grenade, for example, has a 5sec cooldown). i was wondering if folks could suggest a helpful resource (text form would be amazing, but a video would work too!) to get a more concrete idea of the condi dps rotation during raids / what i should be aiming for.

again, thanks for taking the time to read and any help would be greatly appreciated!
-incandeza

I say practice your own rotations. I made up my own and hitting a consistent 23-25k dps. Focus more on Sharpnel Nades and Fire Bombs. I also take kinetic battery for double incendiary ammo. If your skills are on CD, switch to pistol and take advantage of that 50% ‘pistol’ condi duration, which effectively raises your condi duration to 150%

I never use grenade auto attack since 15%(x3) is way too low of a change to bleed than say pistol auto attack + bleed on crit trait.

YouTube it.

Or actually play the game and not try to copy someone’s theoretical conceptualization. Unless there was a video that went alongside this build’s rotation it might not actually have been done by the builder, you know. That does happen more often than one thinks.

DGraves.3720:

YouTube it.

Or actually play the game and not try to copy someone’s theoretical conceptualization

was asking if people had any particular resources (including youtube videos) about rotation suggestions. the videos i have referenced aren’t really helpful with the above problem. the “actually play the game” attitude doesn’t really seem necessary to me, i’m just looking for some suggestions that are a little more concrete so i can practice a bit and not fall flat on my face in the raid (as i go through it my first time playing a class/build that is notorious for having a higher skill cap than most in raids). as time goes on i am sure i will be able to make the build my own.

You need to make the build your own before you take on difficult content. Think about this: Would you really want a teammate who was saying, “Yeah, I don’t know what I am actually doing, but I saw it on YouTube and it was okay-ish and I kinda got it. So I think we’ll be fine!” Because I don’t want that.

That and you’ll do fine regardless. The rotation doesn’t actually change. The concept is the same, stick to your highs, and basically you’ll just swap less to kits that are not the best and swap more to your BiS kits. That’s about it.

Let me find you a YouTube video though to satiate your urge to copy and increase your likelihood of failure when you panic because you totally didn’t expect something.

Wahoo! Heyhey!

There is only one very important thing you have to know: wich skill deals more damage than another one. This is your “Skill Priority List”.
You have to get a feeling about the CD’s and you have to have fast fingers, but all that is just a question of practicing.
So it’s the combination of knowledge AND practice that makes you a good engi.

I’ll open a thread here soon wich shows the exact correct full buffed numbers for each skill the engi has, for both power and condi. It will finally reduce the wrong list on meta battle to ashes :P But as for now, for condi I can give you the correct skill priority list you can work with:

Over 25k DpiSCT (Damage per invested Second Cast Time / Priority)
Incendiary Ammo
Napalm
Blowtorch
Fire Bomb
Shrapnel Grenade
Poison Grenade
Grenade Barrage

20-25k DpiSCT
Concussion Bomb

15-20k DpiSCT
Poison Gas Shell
Big Ol’ Bomb

10-15k DpiSCT
Poison Dart Volley
Static Shot (if there’s ONE Seeker next to Vale Guardian, it will bounce and double it’s damage done – so it would be between Grenade Barrage and Concussion Bomb! ;D)
Freeze Grenade
Grenade

Always try to use skills on top of that list. So for example if Poison Grenade is on CD, use Grenade Barrage, then “check” (in your mind!) if for example Shrapnel Nade should be rdy again, or Fire Bomb maybe? If yes, use them again, if not go for Concussion Bomb etc etc etc

If you got questions, go ahead!

Triggerbrand.8072:

I say practice your own rotations. I made up my own and hitting a consistent 23-25k dps. Focus more on Sharpnel Nades and Fire Bombs. I also take kinetic battery for double incendiary ammo. If your skills are on CD, switch to pistol and take advantage of that 50% ‘pistol’ condi duration, which effectively raises your condi duration to 150%

I never use grenade auto attack since 15%(x3) is way too low of a change to bleed than say pistol auto attack + bleed on crit trait.

While I agree with you to focus on Shrapnel Nades and Fire Bomb, I have to tell you, even with that 50% pistol duration (wich results into 200% condi duration, not 150%), grenade autos are still WAY better than pistol autos.

There is not only the 15% x3 chance for the shrapnel trait, it’s also a 3x chance for the sharpshooter trait.

Pistol auto hit deals full buffed average:
979 power and 2644 condi damage every 0.56s, wich equals 6470 DpS.

Grenade auto hit deals full buffed average:
2808 power and 3938 condi damage every 0.67s, wich equals 10118 DpS.

So always use nades as autohit, except if you are fighting the Red Guardian and he’s under ~33% HP.

Greez!
- Ziggy

Xyonon.3987:

While I agree with you to focus on Shrapnel Nades and Fire Bomb, I have to tell you, even with that 50% pistol duration (wich results into 200% condi duration, not 150%), grenade autos are still WAY better than pistol autos.

pistol with 100% bleed duration untraited. 7s.

Pistol with 100% bleed duration with chemical rounds. 10.5s

Pistol with 0% bleed duration without chemical rounds. 3s.

Pistol with 33% bleed duration (from traitline) with chemical rounds. 6s. Without 33% = kitten .

I am not sure how you came up with 200%. Explain?

Honestly it all comes down to practice. You know what the high-value skills are, and you know where they are on your skill bar. Once you have played the build enough you get used to swapping back to the right kit at the right time when a certain skill is coming up.

It’s also important to remember that the engineer rotation is pretty much impossible to play perfectly, especially with alacrity, because what skill is “best” depends a lot on the situation. So there isn’t really a single resource you can look at to see what you should be doing for “max dps” or whatever. For example, if you are about to run away to the green lightning in a couple seconds, the value of your close range skills goes way up because if you do the typical max DPS order you may find yourself just autoattacking for a while as you stand on the lightning circle with bomb kit 2/3 and blowtorch off cooldown. Or you may want to save napalm for a bit if the boss is moving but will soon be stationary. You will almost certainly screw it up and lose some DPS, but that’s OK, you learn as you go.

If this is your first time raiding, just focus on getting the mechanics down. That is way more important than perfecting your rotation at this point, especially because condi engineer is brought for the utility, not the DPS. So even if your personal DPS is bad, improving it will do little to help your squad’s damage as a whole. Let your teammates do the heavy DPSing, your job is to keep them safe from seekers and green lightning on VG, or to break the bar with slick shoes at the right time to break gorseval (and blind annoying adds and help manage orbs if required).

As far as specific tips go…
1.) You have time to swap kits more than once between skills without losing dps. Assuming your fingers are fast enough, this means that even if you swap to the “wrong” kit (i.e. its good skills are on cd), you have time to swap to another kit or back to pistol and use a different skill. You can also use that time to check the cds of your good skills.
2.) Fire Bomb and Shrapnel Grenade have very little downtime. If you’re freaking out and you forget what skills you have up, go back to those by default.
3.) Prioritize your melee range skills while you actually have time to use them. Every time you come in from green lightning you should be using blowtorch and bomb kit 2 and 3.
4.) The weapon swap button will always take you back to pistol. Do not try to swap back to pistol by pressing the button if the kit you’re in, because you will invariably screw it up and go to the wrong kit.
5.) As engineer on VG one of your primary duties is seeker control. This is more important than DPSing the boss. You should be working glue shot, glue bomb, and mortar kit 3 into your rotations, all used on seekers. This is of course in addition to using flamethrower 3 to knock back seekers.
6.) You have a lot of water fields and a lot of blast finishers. Get used to blasting water as part of your rotation to heal yourself and your team if necessary.
7.) Have your camera zoomed all the way out, and maintain a camera angle that lets you see everything important. Knowing what’s happening around you is vital to selecting what skills you should use.

Triggerbrand.8072:

I say practice your own rotations. I made up my own and hitting a consistent 23-25k dps. Focus more on Sharpnel Nades and Fire Bombs. I also take kinetic battery for double incendiary ammo. If your skills are on CD, switch to pistol and take advantage of that 50% ‘pistol’ condi duration, which effectively raises your condi duration to 150%

I never use grenade auto attack since 15%(x3) is way too low of a change to bleed than say pistol auto attack + bleed on crit trait.

I don’t think I would take kinetic battery just for incendiary ammo. It seems like most of the time you would either proc it on accident or just have to wait around for a while for kinetic battery to come up again, delaying your use of incendiary ammo. If the cooldowns lined up better it would be one thing, but if you receive intermittent alacrity they’re going to be staggered every time. Plus the usefulness of extra endurance regen is really good. If that regen gives you a dodge that saves you from going down even once, it is probably better DPS for your team than kinetic battery.

Also, even if pistol auto gives more bleed damage than grenade autos, grenade 1 still does more damage overall because the skill’s power damage is so much higher. Don’t forget, viper’s and sinister are hybrid power/condi stat sets. It’s called “condi engi” but it is really a hybrid build!

thank you guys so much (particularly Dinosaurs and Xyonon)! i am literally taking handwritten notes right now and am going to practice my dps on some golems in a bit.

EDIT: edited because the quotes were super long

just want to reiterate that i really appreciate the posts in this thread. i feel like im starting to grasp how to approach my role and will hopefully with more practice and a few youtube videos showing off the raid itself i will be as prepared as i can be!

I’m curious: Why are you deadset on using an engineer specifically?

DGraves.3720:

Xyonon.3987:

While I agree with you to focus on Shrapnel Nades and Fire Bomb, I have to tell you, even with that 50% pistol duration (wich results into 200% condi duration, not 150%), grenade autos are still WAY better than pistol autos.

pistol with 100% bleed duration untraited. 7s.

Pistol with 100% bleed duration with chemical rounds. 10.5s

Pistol with 0% bleed duration without chemical rounds. 3s.

Pistol with 33% bleed duration (from traitline) with chemical rounds. 6s. Without 33% = kitten .

I am not sure how you came up with 200%. Explain?

You just did it yourself, now didn’t you?

Pistol with 0% dura is 3s.
Pistol with 100% dura is 6s.
Pistol with chemical rounds is 9s.
3s to 9s → 200% dura.

You have to think about the base 100% duration of a skill, in that case 3s. If you have 100% condi duration, the result is 200% total duration. If you now add 50% from pistol trait, it’s 300% total or 200% bonus duration. Since you should always aim for 100% condi duration, the trait works like “+100% condi duration for pistol skills”.

Xyonon.3987:

DGraves.3720:

Xyonon.3987:

While I agree with you to focus on Shrapnel Nades and Fire Bomb, I have to tell you, even with that 50% pistol duration (wich results into 200% condi duration, not 150%), grenade autos are still WAY better than pistol autos.

pistol with 100% bleed duration untraited. 7s.

Pistol with 100% bleed duration with chemical rounds. 10.5s

Pistol with 0% bleed duration without chemical rounds. 3s.

Pistol with 33% bleed duration (from traitline) with chemical rounds. 6s. Without 33% = kitten .

I am not sure how you came up with 200%. Explain?

You just did it yourself, now didn’t you?

Pistol with 0% dura is 3s.
Pistol with 100% dura is 6s.
Pistol with chemical rounds is 9s.
3s to 9s -> 200% dura.

You have to think about the base 100% duration of a skill, in that case 3s. If you have 100% condi duration, the result is 200% total duration. If you now add 50% from pistol trait, it’s 300% total or 200% bonus duration. Since you should always aim for 100% condi duration, the trait works like “+100% condi duration for pistol skills”.

While I do not agree with your calculation order and explanation ( 3 * 1.5 = 4.5 * 2 = 9 ) the outcome is the same. I agree.

why does the calculation order matter?

Because this:

Triggerbrand.8072:

50% ‘pistol’ condi duration, which effectively raises your condi duration to 150%.

Is not true. It raises the pistol duration by 50% wich is in fact a condi duration increase of 100% to 200% (if you have 100%). I wanted to point out that 50% pistol duration is more worth than one may think at first.

yeah i just wanna know why hes skeptical of multiplying (commutative) multiplicative multipliers in a different order.

its something your 6th grade math teacher shouldve remorselessly beaten out of you (but nicely, not like actually beaten).

DGraves is sceptical about everything, you should know this ’bout now. ;D

well since he thinks everything is 6th grade math i was hoping he would know some, and here it is staring him in the face and hes like nope

insanemaniac.2456:

why does the calculation order matter?

Because of how the values are presented. The trait for the pistol is 150%, it only becomes 300 after you add in the condition duration. This matters because if you have less than 100 condition duration the linearity gets screwed up.

To be frank it’s why it looks like there’s double when it’s not double at all:

3 * 1.5 = 4.5 * 1.33 ~ 6s. It just looks like it doubles due to the mandatory trait. Basically the variables aren’t just “hot swappable” unless you have a specific condition met (100% condition duration).

DGraves.3720:

insanemaniac.2456:

why does the calculation order matter?

Because of how the values are presented. The trait for the pistol is 150%, it only becomes 300 after you add in the condition duration. This matters because if you have less than 100 condition duration the linearity gets screwed up.

To be frank it’s why it looks like there’s double when it’s not double at all:

3 * 1.5 = 4.5 * 1.33 ~ 6s. It just looks like it doubles due to the mandatory trait. Basically the variables aren’t just “hot swappable” unless you have a specific condition met (100% condition duration).

3 * 2 * 1.5 = 9
3 * 1.5 * 2 = 9

Oh boy what have I startet here ... yea the trait becomes weaker if you don’t have 100% condi duration. In fact, the pistol trait adds flat condi duration for pistol skill by 50-100%, accodring to your current condition duration. If you have 0%, it adds 50% pistol duration, if you have 100%, it adds 100%.

Base duration * 1 + your condi duration * 1.5 = end value
3 seconds * (1+0%) * (1+50%) = 4.5 seconds (+50%)
3 seconds * (1+100%) * (1+50%) = 9 seconds (+100%)