Guild Wars 2

Grenadier essentially gives you a 50% damage increase, not to mention an extra 300 range on top of that; this is absolutely absurd. Because this trait exists anyone wanting to use grenades absolutely has to get it thereby hampering build diversity. Also the trait can not be re-balanced in it’s current state since it’s based on integers.

I propose that the grenade kit be changed to always throw 3 grenades with the damage of each grenade being decreased by X% (probably 15) and make Grenadier increase damage by X% instead of throwing an extra grenade.

Another possible solution would be to increase the damage per grenade by X% (probably 10) and make Grenadier have a Y%chance (probably 20) to throw a third grenade instead of 100%.

This has been discussed a few times, though it is possible to get viable use out of grenade kit without it traited, it just becomes more of a utility kit for spreading chill and poison, with burst on toolkit.
What has been discussed before was change untraited to throw either 2 or 3 grenades while having it traited guarantees 3.
While it is a fantastic trait it is a grandmaster and is equateable to HGH, I do not believe there is anything wrong with it.

I agree with the OP. Grenadier is a good trait, but poorly designed because the Grenade Kit is not useful without it.

My ideas for base functionality of the Grenade Kit are:
1200 range
3 grenades
Tone the damage down so the 3 grenades are doing about 10% more than our current 2 grenades.

For the Grandmaster trait it should be
+300 range
+50% damage

I’d hardly call it equatable to HGH considering that not only is it not a 50% damage increase, but it requires you to have at least 3 elixers to be really effective so you sacrifice something for it other than the 30 trait points you spend to reach it.

That Other Guy.7351:

Because this trait exists anyone wanting to use grenades absolutely has to get it thereby hampering build diversity.

isn’t that rather common? to focus on a given weapon, you go into the trait line that contains stuff pertaining to it? seems to me it makes sense… can’t have it all.

thomasgjkgwdn.4760:

That Other Guy.7351:

Because this trait exists anyone wanting to use grenades absolutely has to get it thereby hampering build diversity.

isn’t that rather common? to focus on a given weapon, you go into the trait line that contains stuff pertaining to it? seems to me it makes sense… can’t have it all.

It’s actually not common at all.

Elixirs are good without 30 points into Alchemy.
Pistol and Rifle are both useful without 30 points into Firearms.
Bombs are good without 30 points in Explosives.
Gadgets are useful without 30 points into Tools.

Certainly you could trait into these things to make them even better, but these are just a few examples of skills/weapons that are commonly used by Engineers that don’t require traiting fully into just to be (gulp, here I go…) “viable”.

It’s not just an Engineer thing either. Imagine if Elementalist attunements were only worth using if they had 30 points into the corresponding attunement trait line? Yikes!

At least we’re not rangers though, to really have any of their utilities to be decent they pretty much have to spend 30 points in the corresponding line (not counting spirits though, although they were as well a while ago.)

I do dislike having to spend 30 points just to be able to use a kit. I can get all the utility I really need without spending much if anything to make use of the FT, EG, or TK. Bombs need some investment but they are still powerful without them depending on the situation. Grenades, arguably not so much.

have to agree w/ OP

grenades is primarily a damage kit. theyve got very little utility — all they can do is provide covering conditions and 2 soft ccs. the kit has no escapes/mobility, no control, no hard defense, no boons, no healing/cleanse. and so, without the trait, theres no point to taking grenades when it does less damage than our other damage options.

50% damage increase is pretty much unheard of with any other trait… its usually 10-15% damage, 20% cdr, a little extra range, and or extra conditions that you get from a trait or 3. 50% is ridiculous and kills build diversity.

maybe the grenades trait shouldnt even be a grandmaster. most other weapon traits are 10 or 20. only bombs and grenades are 30… do other classes even have any grandmaster weapon specific traits?

throwing 3 grenades without grenadier is not a good solution. in pvp the 3rd grenade grants extra duration on chill, poison and blind, and it stacks more bleeds with shrapnel grenade, shrapnel, and sharpshooter. reduced power damage will mean nothing. you can be sure people will run 20/10/0/30/10 and you’ll see way more grenade automated response engis or grenade engis with invigorating speed, prot injection, and backpack regen.

grenadier is fine, 30 points is a pretty big investment, grenades are hard to use, etc etc etc

Grenades are already being balanced around throwing 3 grenades as evidenced by the upcoming condition duration nerfs on them.

Whenever there are traits that benefit specific weapons (or weapon kits) they are balanced around having said traits and if the weapon is imbalanced they’ll adjust either the weapon or the trait(s) to compensate. Grenadier has no levers to adjust in its current form and is in fact drastically overpowered to the point that there’s no option to use grenades without it and accept the resulting trade-offs.

Where can I find the details of this upcoming condition duration nerfs? I hadn’t heard anything about this.

All i wish for is a reasonable range. I shouldnt throw a grenade farther than my bullets go.

I really wish that Grenadier in it’s current form didn’t exist. But it depends on where you’d want the kit to go, long-term. To me the non-traited Grenade Kit is a high-damage / high-AE kit with very good range which pays with an inherent inaccuracy, which works better the closer you are.

The trait largely removes the inaccuracy, by adding +1 grenade. The extra saturation is quite significant, and makes missing versus a static (but small) target much less of an issue, much less a moving one.

What I would do – long-term, mind you – is make Grenade Kit more focused into that “high damage, low accuracy”-role. The trait would then support that, giving it higher damage and maybe even lower accuracy a bit further. I would in fact change the Mortar to be an elite version of a similar idea, acting as an area saturation tool.

Adamantium.3682:

thomasgjkgwdn.4760:

That Other Guy.7351:

Because this trait exists anyone wanting to use grenades absolutely has to get it thereby hampering build diversity.

isn’t that rather common? to focus on a given weapon, you go into the trait line that contains stuff pertaining to it? seems to me it makes sense… can’t have it all.

It’s actually not common at all.

Elixirs are good without 30 points into Alchemy.
Pistol and Rifle are both useful without 30 points into Firearms.
Bombs are good without 30 points in Explosives.
Gadgets are useful without 30 points into Tools.

Certainly you could trait into these things to make them even better, but these are just a few examples of skills/weapons that are commonly used by Engineers that don’t require traiting fully into just to be (gulp, here I go…) “viable”.

It’s not just an Engineer thing either. Imagine if Elementalist attunements were only worth using if they had 30 points into the corresponding attunement trait line? Yikes!

i’m referring to all the cases – outside of engineer – where e.g. a cooldown reduction or range increment requires you to go into a certain trait line.

lakdav.3694:

All i wish for is a reasonable range. I shouldnt throw a grenade farther than my bullets go.

didn’t you know? engineers have VERY strong arms. it comes from all the hammering (yes, engineers invent stuff using hammers).

My experience:
The traited Grenade-Kit is one of very few ways for engineers to be viable in endgame-Pve (and WvW). It is the only competetive ranged-AoE Utility/Weapon currently available to engineers from a DPS perspective (it certaily has some of the best AoE damage/soft-cc at 1500 range in the entire game). This makes it quite important for playing in Dungeon pugs and not slowing down the team.
Big changes to this Kit/Trait should be well thought through as they potentially change the way engineers have to approach ranged DPS completely.

Brtwrst.9312:

My experience:
The traited Grenade-Kit is one of very few ways for engineers to be viable in endgame-Pve (and WvW). It is the only competetive ranged-AoE Utility/Weapon currently available to engineers from a DPS perspective (it certaily has some of the best AoE damage/soft-cc at 1500 range in the entire game). This makes it quite important for playing in Dungeon pugs and not slowing down the team.
Big changes to this Kit/Trait should be well thought through as they potentially change the way engineers have to approach ranged DPS completely.

Thats pretty much the point. Overdependancy on this one trait.

There are two problems. One is that the whole kit is balanced upon having said trait. Making it almost useless otherwise.
The second is shared by other kits and has already been mentioned – overdependency on traits. I would add, we’re the only class that has got grandmaster traits working on a single utility…and even if we were to consider weapons, there is a single other example in the game (a necro trait about scepters).

@village idiot.1436

Karl McLain.5604:

Engineer:
We feel that the engineer is in a decent place right now, but we did take this opportunity to scale down a few outlier skills in terms of potency. Net Turret’s immobilize duration has been lowered to reduce the amount of lockdown after a Supply Crate drop, and Poison Grenade’s poison duration has been lowered to account for poison field stacking.

• Net Turret: Decreased the immobilize duration from 3 seconds to 2 seconds on the basic attack.
• Poison Grenade: Reduced the poison duration per pulse from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.
• Box of Nails: Reduced the cast time from 1 second to 3/4 second.
• Box of Piranhas: Reduced the cast time from 1 second to 3/4 second.
• A.E.D.: Reduced the cast time from 1 second to 3/4 second.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Feature-Build-Balance-Preview

Not long before this post they talked about the fact that you can get absurd poison duration on someone who is standing in the area overlapped by the 3 grenades, especially if thrown at close range so the fields are close together. I tried to point this out to them over a year ago, but you know how Anet’s timeline goes…

I propose:

1. All grenades skills throw 3 grenades.
2. Each grenade does .25X of the current damage of Grenadier
3. Grenadier adds a 4th grenade and 300 range (essentially doing the same damage as it does now but with 4 grenades).

It would be a 25% buff to damage generally but would not noticeably improve max damage traited.
It would be a buff to the number of targets you could potentially hit.
It fits given the more difficult nature of throwing the grenades in WvW and PvP v PvE.

i still don’t see how it’s badly designed. all shatter mesmers get illusionary persona. all warriors of every build get cleansing ire. all thieves get executioner. these are the top tier traits. without them, all those builds are garbage. if you want an actual poorly designed trait, look at automated response. grenadier is fine.

Illusionary Persona affects a class mechanic that everyone has at all times whereas grenadier affects only a single weapon. Cleansing Ire and Executioner are most certainly not taken by all warriors/theives; in the case of the warrior you’re generalizing based on the most popular build and while I haven’t played thief much Executioner definitely doesn’t seem worth it in a condition build.

Here’s a few suggestions for tweaking grenades and some other traits in this tree:
-Only 1 grenade is thrown at a time, range stays at 1500 regardless of traits. Base damage increased to around 275% of current base. Helps to reduce some screen clutter among other things. Maybe increase the explosion radius slightly.

-GM Grenadier trait is replaced by “Demolitions Expert”. This trait triples the chance for on-hit effects to proc for any explosive attack, meaning bombkit, minefield etc are now also useful for proccing on crit effects and the like.

-Reserve Mines trait deleted and replaced with Explosive Powder.

-Pistol auto-attack changed back so that is actually counted as an explosive attack.

thomasgjkgwdn.4760:

Adamantium.3682:

thomasgjkgwdn.4760:

That Other Guy.7351:

Because this trait exists anyone wanting to use grenades absolutely has to get it thereby hampering build diversity.

isn’t that rather common? to focus on a given weapon, you go into the trait line that contains stuff pertaining to it? seems to me it makes sense… can’t have it all.

It’s actually not common at all.

Elixirs are good without 30 points into Alchemy.
Pistol and Rifle are both useful without 30 points into Firearms.
Bombs are good without 30 points in Explosives.
Gadgets are useful without 30 points into Tools.

Certainly you could trait into these things to make them even better, but these are just a few examples of skills/weapons that are commonly used by Engineers that don’t require traiting fully into just to be (gulp, here I go…) “viable”.

It’s not just an Engineer thing either. Imagine if Elementalist attunements were only worth using if they had 30 points into the corresponding attunement trait line? Yikes!

i’m referring to all the cases – outside of engineer – where e.g. a cooldown reduction or range increment requires you to go into a certain trait line.

Of course you would need to go into certain trait lines to make things better, that’s the point of traits. The Grenadier trait however has crossed a line into mandatory status just to use the Grenade Kit. There aren’t many traits that and that depended upon, and the few others out there should also be fixed.

At once you were still able to take nades without grenadier and still be viable, but then grenades were balanced around that trait and they lost like…33% damage irc. I think nades should just throw 3 grenades all the time and lose x% damage overall. Then grenadier could be range+ x% damage.

My issue with grenades in general is that the mechanic is only good for a set amount of playtime as compared to most classes who can drag and drop a well or trap at will and leave it to do a job. Grenades can be very clumsy at the best of times and over a duration the hand weakens and becomes less co-ordinated during game play. I am of the thought that after battling several necros, that the ballpark for grenade damage or bombs (or anything else for that matter) is simply not enough for a full power nor a full conditions build (both which affect grenades). The simple reason that the engineer yet has to have a massive boost in some way in both its base/ condition damage, as well as lacking any great burst damage if we were to compare it to other class stats who can afford to have high healing, condition reflecting builds. Grenades have to be deadly, two shots and out for the count seeing engineers don’t really have that great condition removal on the fly. They need to cut an enemy in its tracks quickly in order to balance its weaker spots. As bad as it is, the class really has been nerfed so badly by Anet it is actually criminal and its original state needs to return in some way or form.

All the above examples from the other posters would be superb, I myself would like to see the drag and drop grenade mechanic gone and instead open to homing grenades for the simple fact that the mechanic on mouse placement is very tiresome and not at all reliable when other classes can afford mass damage by simply pointing at you. Grenades and engineer damage in general (both raw and condies) really do have to be buffed way more then they are now to even make explosive kits viable at any rate. As Penguin rightly state , we lost 33% of our damage even with grenadier trait and we really need that back IMO.

i don’t know if you guys understand this but having grenade kit throw 3 grenades by default is a terrible idea. reducing the power damage does absolutely nothing for condition grenades which encompasses 99% of engineer players in high level pvp. all it will do is promote 20/10/0/30/10 builds which are even more defensive with virtually unchanged damage. the last thing we need is to add to the tanky meta.

and explosives not being viable is a bad joke. have you played any tpvp recently? or pve? or wvwvw?

and finally grenadier is a build defining trait. you put 30 [points into a tree for these build defining traits. illusionary persona is a build defining trait. no mesmer will run a shatter build without it because it will be terrible. grenadier is a build defining trait. no other weapon/kit setup can put out as much condition damage as a grenade build. guardians will go 30 into valor for a meditation build, etc etc etc. the whole point of traits is to strengthen your build. i don’t know why you picked grenadier, which is fine, as a staple of poorly designed traits when horrible, awful, terrible things like diamond skin and automated response exist.

ps all warriors of all builds in pvp run cleansing ire. if you don’t well you’re just gimping yourself. all power thieves run executioner because it’s amazing. condition thieves are garbage in tpvp because they are outclassed by necros, engis, rangers, and warriors and it’s pretty much guaranteed they’ll lose the cap because of all the stealth. it’s the same reason why pu builds are meh.

Grenadier is just a bad designed trait, since they’ve balanced the whole weapon upon having it. Thus making the kit subpar and quite useless without it.
The analogies you’re making don’t make sense at all: those classes aren’t balanced upon having those things by default. Unlike the grenade kit.

And i would add, while it is quite obvious that a grandmaster trait should give quite a big effect it is applies to a single weapon…making the weapon bad to start with makes no sense.
If the issue is that the traited weapon would then be too strong, than the trait – not the weapon – should be nerfed…and put as a master one as appropriate for its effect. That is what happens in any other class (with a single exception given by a necromancers’ scepter trait, but at least the weapon doesn’t seem to be balanced upon having it).
And that’s also why many other classes have buffs for an entire category of utilities as grandmaster traits: to avoid having to give a large one to a single one, something that would likely break its balance.

I recall reading somewhere (or maybe it was a YouTube video) where anet stated they wanted more people to put 30 points into something rather than get everything they needed with only 10 or 20. The problem is the balance is not proportionate. Grenadier gets you the most bang for your buck compared to, say rifled turret barrels, which would probably be considered the worse. I think if anet made all the other trait lines comparable to grenadier, it would be a different story. Then people would feel better about choosing what line to take, because in the end you’re getting some major buffs.

The problem with grenades are that they change the performance by adding projectiles. No other skill in the game have a trait that works this way (that i can think of right now). This means that the performance of the individual projectile is hampered.

icewyrm.5038:

Here’s a few suggestions for tweaking grenades and some other traits in this tree:
-Only 1 grenade is thrown at a time, range stays at 1500 regardless of traits. Base damage increased to around 275% of current base. Helps to reduce some screen clutter among other things. Maybe increase the explosion radius slightly.

-GM Grenadier trait is replaced by “Demolitions Expert”. This trait triples the chance for on-hit effects to proc for any explosive attack, meaning bombkit, minefield etc are now also useful for proccing on crit effects and the like.

-Reserve Mines trait deleted and replaced with Explosive Powder.

-Pistol auto-attack changed back so that is actually counted as an explosive attack.

Some very interesting ideas here. Would definitely like to see explosive shot actually count as an explosion.

I think:

Untraited: 3 ’nades at 10% reduced damage.

Traited: +300 range and a 10% damage boost (brings it to current traited level).

Or to make it really cool:

Untraited: 3 ’nades.

Traited: +300 range, really low chance of blast finisher.

This way the trait is still really cool, but not mandatory.

The obvious and only real answer is to reduce grenades to one per toss, adjust damage/conditions accordingly, and buff Steel-Packed Powder and Precise Sights. The ridiculously high attack rate on grenades is the real reason it’s broken, not because of any marginal increase that results from the Grenadier trait itself.

take a look at this. i created it in order to handle such traits like grenadier and other musthave-or-useless traits for skills.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/General-New-General-Trait-Paradigms/first#post3608879

in the special case of grenadier i’d suggest:

• make the main reason of the kit be the ranged application of chill, poison and blindness
• make the trait increase the secondary effects of the kit: condition damage (bleeding), vulnerability, direct damage.

the additional granade serves exactly this purpose, but since the current main reason to use grenades is NOT to apply firstmentioned conditions, the whole trait is screwed. right now, the first reason to use this kit is the application of ranged aoe damage and the other random effects it provides. so the trait is just increasing the value of the skill, turning it into a musthave for any grenade-build.

oh, and to all of the people demanding stuff with a RNG like “chance of blast finisher” and “chance to throw extra granades”…. these are NEVER good ideas.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

The obvious and only real answer is to reduce grenades to one per toss, adjust damage/conditions accordingly, and buff Steel-Packed Powder and Precise Sights. The ridiculously high attack rate on grenades is the real reason it’s broken, not because of any marginal increase that results from the Grenadier trait itself.

Aside from suggesting Grenadier is a “marginal increase” (which I think is absurd) I think you are right, one grenade would ideally be the best solution. However this has its drawbacks aside from the 3 hits-per-attack issue. The 3 grenades allow the GK (not you) to hit a relatively large area without going overboard. With just 1 projectile it would need a larger area. As you said it helps immensely with proc effects. Though you mentioned adjusting those accordingly in our own traits, we still have the rest of the game to worry about like sigils, runes, and food buffs. If the GK went down to 1 projectile that would severely hamper a lot of what Engineers can do with these. Worst of all, we would essentially have a ranged Bomb Kit with slightly different effects.

At this point I think the GK has to keep the multiple projectiles. You’re right when you say that is the core issue here, but I think it’s base functionality of the GK at this point. Aside from the huge damage increase from Grenadier, adding that third projectile is really why it’s such a necessary trait. If we could make all 3 projectiles base functionality without Grenadier, then tacking on some combination extra conditions, damage, and range onto Grenadier, that might be the best solution.

That Other Guy.7351:

Grenades are already being balanced around throwing 3 grenades as evidenced by the upcoming condition duration nerfs on them.

This is the main issue I see. It’s balanced by having 3 grenades.

And untraited grenades are 33% less effective than what it is balanced for. This makes untraited grenades kind of useless. I’ve noticed this quite a while ago.

Sometimes I just get tired of posting engineer inconsistencies so I don’t even bother.

I’m not seeing the problem here. That trait line is great for both condition and physical damage builds. You would already be putting 20 points in for using grenade kit anyway or 25 for PvE so 10/5 more trait points isn’t a major loss.

i’d be fine with it, if grenades could be used as a damage source as main effect without grenadier. grenadier could increase a secondary effect of the greneades like the AoE effect, the range, or any proc that would serve a certain purpose, like say, blindness proc with cooldown, something you dont HAVE to have, but would be nice to. currently it’s just a HAVE to.

By putting it as a grandmaster trait, working on a single weapon/utility, they had to give it quite remarkable effects.
The problem is that they then balanced the whole weapon by taking the trait in account, instead of considering it as optional, like it should be.

Adamantium.3682:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

The obvious and only real answer is to reduce grenades to one per toss, adjust damage/conditions accordingly, and buff Steel-Packed Powder and Precise Sights. The ridiculously high attack rate on grenades is the real reason it’s broken, not because of any marginal increase that results from the Grenadier trait itself.

Aside from suggesting Grenadier is a “marginal increase” (which I think is absurd) I think you are right, one grenade would ideally be the best solution. However this has its drawbacks aside from the 3 hits-per-attack issue. The 3 grenades allow the GK (not you) to hit a relatively large area without going overboard. With just 1 projectile it would need a larger area. As you said it helps immensely with proc effects. Though you mentioned adjusting those accordingly in our own traits, we still have the rest of the game to worry about like sigils, runes, and food buffs. If the GK went down to 1 projectile that would severely hamper a lot of what Engineers can do with these. Worst of all, we would essentially have a ranged Bomb Kit with slightly different effects.

At this point I think the GK has to keep the multiple projectiles. You’re right when you say that is the core issue here, but I think it’s base functionality of the GK at this point. Aside from the huge damage increase from Grenadier, adding that third projectile is really why it’s such a necessary trait. If we could make all 3 projectiles base functionality without Grenadier, then tacking on some combination extra conditions, damage, and range onto Grenadier, that might be the best solution.

We have the Flamethrower specifically for that. The problem is that no one’s gonna use that because grenades hit almost as fast as the FT auto (and attack speed isn’t compromised by using skills) and deal like 3x more damage. Moreover, while stuff like bombs and FT have the potential to be good (FT with a pretty substantial rework), no matter how much Anet buffs them, they’re never going to overtake the Grenade Kit in usefulness unless they get buffed to Elementalist-tier DPS, which would just be dumb in its own right.

In terms of simple fixes, though, right now the big difference between Grenades and Bombs is Steel-Packed Powder, that trait needs to be reworked in some way. I’d personally support something like making it 10 seconds base but then putting a quarter-second ICD on it. That way it’d still proc with every bomb or grenade attack (not hit) but not three times per grenade toss. That’d be a good start since it’d substantially normalize vuln stack capability on the engineer (bombs would actually stack more, which is appropriate since they’re melee) without overly nerfing their stacking capabilities.

i think i know what to do with grenadier finally!

1. delete grenadier, let grenades always throw 3.
2. increase cd on grenades 2 to 10sec or cut bleed duration in half. (face it… op)
3. add grenade range into forceful explosives, move to master (and rename?)
4. combine short fuse and explosive powder and move them to grandmaster, buff to 15% damage (10% seems weak?)
5. move accelerant packed turrets to master to screw w/ decap engi
6. think of 2 interesting adept traits to create out of thin air

also, on shrapnel:
change it to add a 2 sec bleed to grenade autos, or a 6 sec bleed to bomb autos!

right now it adds obscene amounts of condi pressure for free without counterplay. a typical condi engi rotation will go into grenades, throw 2 3 4 5 in some order, and switch. if it all hits, thats 12 hits at 15% chance / hit to produce base 12 sec bleeds. that means we can expect to have 2 free (LONG) bleeds from it whenever a condi engi blows his load. this change would keep the total expected bleed ticks approximately the same after 3 autos, but it would put them on attacks condi builds dont currently use… which means a perceptive opponent can understand what is going on and find a way to counter it. it also increases the number of attacks an engi needs to connect to produce the burst of condis with either bombs or nades, and follows the paradigm of “you need to keep attacking to keep up pressure” where right now engis can pretty much blow a load when an opponents cleanse is down and dance for the rest of the fight because everything lasts 15-20 secs.

or it could be torment instead of bleed. could be interesting. shrapnel hurts when you move, right? but i think refreshing the long bleed stacks from grenades 2 instead of adding another cover condi is better…

i also think incendiary powder needs similar treatment, but i dont have an idea atm.

And why sharpnel grenade should be op, exactly? For 2 stacks of bleeding per 12s on a five seconds cooldown? Cause that’s the base skill, after all.
Many other classes can deal bleeding just with their autoattacks. We can’t even do that unless we explicitely trait for it.
And sure, they do quite a good amount of conditions. They’re supposed to – that’s their source of damage, since the direct damage they deal isn’t much different from an autoattack.

sir youre incoherent

in condi builds, shrapnel grenade can stack 12 – 15 bleeds on its own
pistol 1 has bleeds, but it was nerfed to oblivion a long time ago
shrapnel grenade does 1.5x direct damage of grenade 1 + as much bleed damage as an auto in a power build, a very significant difference, but power builds dont really need nerfing.

now… what? and you shouldnt be basing your opinion on untraited grenades, no one uses it like that.

Doing 1.5x direct damage of an autoattack in the best case (on 2 skills, and around the half in the other 2) isn’t exactly something phenomenal for a weapon – that’s why any of those grenade skills apart from the autoattack also deal some kind of condition.
That, and to make the damage of a sustained type. Bursts on kits would be a nightmare as far as balancing goes.
And no, the weapon must be balanced in its base form – exactly as any other weapon or utility in the game is.
Saying the weapon must be balanced upon it being fully traited is nonsensical – traits should be optional, non mandatory. You can’t make a base weapon useless just so the traited weapon is balanced.
If they’ve got a problem with the fully traited weapon, they should fix the traits, not the weapon. And demote them to lesser tiers if necessary.

hm.. well im glad you agree with the premise of this thread. so do i. why/what are you trying to argue?

edit: my point in saying “shrapnel grenade is op” is that no other single skill in the game can maintain 12-15 bleeds. key words: maintain, single. other skills can maintain 6~9 bleeds alone. other skills can burst to 12~15 bleeds, but not maintain. other skill combos can maintain high bleed stacks. shrapnel does that on its own.

Neither can shrapnel grenade alone. Unless you’re talking about traiting with shrapnel, grenadier, short fuse and thus having bonus condition duration from the explosives tree and, maybe, other sources. Obviously, that’s only if all the grenades hit their target.

But that’s called specialization. If it didn’t work well after spending almost half of the trait points there, it wouldn’t make sense.

grenadier and 36% pizza are sufficient to maintain a 12 stack
grenadier, 36% pizza, and short fuse can maintain 15
grenadier, 40% pizza, toxic crystal, giver pistols, shrapnel, and short fuse can maintain… umm.. about 20~21

again, you want to assume someone would consider grenades worth using without grenadier. i consider that mindset pathological. unreal. naive. in denial. who do you know that uses grenades without grenadier? non-80s?

its what this whole thread is about. 50% damage increase is too much and the kit has been balanced around having that 50% instead of not.

how can i be more clear without being rude? we agree, and still you argue?

What i don’t agree with is you saying a skill is too strong when you’re considering it along a lot of bonuses put together. Even your first example is considering it along with 66% condition duration apart from the trait – since to get grenadier, you will end up with 30% bonus condition duration.
You’re making the same error devs are doing with grenadier: considering the best case possible, instead of the default one.
And as far as damaging conditions go, all that grenades offer are bleedings and poison. If it didn’t deal at least those bleedings, it would be useless for any build that isn’t a zerk one.

I have a question, since grenades cause vulnerability, which is more important, stacking vulnerability on opponent (+25% damage) or stacking might on yourself? Also, does vulnerability apply to condition damage as well, or just pure incoming damage to any source?

Manuhell.2759:

What i don’t agree with is you saying a skill is too strong when you’re considering it along a lot of bonuses put together. Even your first example is considering it along with 66% condition duration apart from the trait – since to get grenadier, you will end up with 30% bonus condition duration.
You’re making the same error devs are doing with grenadier: considering the best case possible, instead of the default one.
And as far as damaging conditions go, all that grenades offer are bleedings and poison. If it didn’t deal at least those bleedings, it would be useless for any build that isn’t a zerk one.

why is it an error to consider normal use cases? the default one will never happen. thats a problem i seek to address with that 6 point list, and even then its unlikely any condi build would have < 50% duration when using nades with those changes.

the whole wvw roaming condi meta exists because the devs arent considering the effects of stacking everything they put in the game while the players are.

Steel Fenrir.2791:

I have a question, since grenades cause vulnerability, which is more important, stacking vulnerability on opponent (+25% damage) or stacking might on yourself? Also, does vulnerability apply to condition damage as well, or just pure incoming damage to any source?

might in solo, both in a party
vuln affects direct damage only