Guild Wars 2

I was wondering why some classes were able to kill so efficiently and effectively with glass cannon specs.

If you check half the classes (Thieves, Elementalists, Mesmers, and Rangers), you’ll notice that it’s VERY easy for them to develop a burst profile with just numbers alone. Thieves can trait into Critical Strikes (Eles into Air Magic, Rangers into Skirmishing, and Mesmers into Dueling) and get not only an increase in Precision but also Critical Damage. For 30 points alone this increases your damage significantly without any special abilities from 30% extra crit damage and 14% extra crit chance.

Glass Cannon types like this can pair themselves up with Berserkers gear to give themselves 1000 Power, 700 precision (33% crit chance), and 62% critical damage. this doesn’t include runes or jewels that increase critical chance. This means that a glass cannon with Berserker gear can have at least a 51% crit chance with 242% crit damage.

All other classes, on the other hand, get precision and condition damage, a long-term attribute whose damage just doesn’t add up to direct at all (and, in my opinion, needs to be increased). These classes can still have an effective glass cannon build, but not as efficiently traited as the ones with Precision and Crit Damage paired up.

I hated that too, especially because the rifle traits are on the firearms line, but like you said, it gives condition power instead of crtical damage. Now Im sure pistol users are fine with since they benefit from mored condition but rifle users not so much because other than blunderbuss, no skill does cond.

Mesmers and rangers don’t even glass cannon that well so it’s a pretty moot discussion. Having good skills and good traits for boosting damage helps a lot more than having precision and prowess in the same line. For example, the +10% crit chance from Scope paired with the +10% damage from Enduring Power makes a way bigger difference than 30 points in Skirmishing, which doesn’t give much of anything at all.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Mesmers and rangers don’t even glass cannon that well so it’s a pretty moot discussion. Having good skills and good traits for boosting damage helps a lot more than having precision and prowess in the same line. For example, the +10% crit chance from Scope paired with the +10% damage from Enduring Power makes a way bigger difference than 30 points in Skirmishing, which doesn’t give much of anything at all.

Scope doesn’t work, enduring power has very small uptime unless you attack afk target.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Mesmers and rangers don’t even glass cannon that well so it’s a pretty moot discussion. Having good skills and good traits for boosting damage helps a lot more than having precision and prowess in the same line. For example, the +10% crit chance from Scope paired with the +10% damage from Enduring Power makes a way bigger difference than 30 points in Skirmishing, which doesn’t give much of anything at all.

You have to be standing still for Scope, while enduring damage gives you 10% damage when endurance is full (i. e. – not dodging).

If you’re standing still, you’re dead. If you’re not dodging, you’re dead. These are trait bonuses that require you not to be using any tactical abilities. Hence, you are a sitting duck able to be picked off without any hard effort.

That’s not my argument at all. The other classes can actually kill in three shots without having glass cannon builds. Meanwhile we as engineers have to equip and squeeze out every drop of damage and we still don’t come close. We don’t even come close to the damage output of the condition builds these other classes enjoy.

For example, my ranger kills things as a trap condi build half the level of my 80 condi built engi in full exotics in the same zone. That should tell you something right there. Part of the problem for condis is engineers don’t get the initial damage burst other condi classes get with their skills, necros and rangers enjoy this right off the bat.

Also, on can build their engi to be all burst berserker and STILL come nowhere near the number of shots regular classes in bunker builds take to kill something. It’s THAT far off.

Until they fixit there will be this huge noticeable gap in performance between those other classes and us. Even ele’s cond damage builds have that small burst when applying that condi damage.

To make things worse they have made the condi damage between classes actually tick at different amounts. My friends guards burns for example in condi build with the same type of armor had the initial hit and did 20-24 more damage per tick then my engis grenade/FT ticks do. My thief’s bleeds do about 13-15 more damage then my bleeds on my engi and my poison attacks on my ranger do more damage per tick then my engi’s EG attacks.

So there’s definitely something wrong here.

I gotta agree with you there, Tigirius. Engineers shouldn’t have damage (condition or otherwise) reduction on their kits just because we can swap our kits faster than others.

tigirius.9014:

To make things worse they have made the condi damage between classes actually tick at different amounts. My friends guards burns for example in condi build with the same type of armor had the initial hit and did 20-24 more damage per tick then my engis grenade/FT ticks do. My thief’s bleeds do about 13-15 more damage then my bleeds on my engi and my poison attacks on my ranger do more damage per tick then my engi’s EG attacks.

So there’s definitely something wrong here.

Um, what ? This sounds highly dubious (honestly, my first reaction was “nonsense !”). Did you check the overall condition damage stat for each character before doing your tests ?

Sporadicus.1028:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Mesmers and rangers don’t even glass cannon that well so it’s a pretty moot discussion. Having good skills and good traits for boosting damage helps a lot more than having precision and prowess in the same line. For example, the +10% crit chance from Scope paired with the +10% damage from Enduring Power makes a way bigger difference than 30 points in Skirmishing, which doesn’t give much of anything at all.

You have to be standing still for Scope, while enduring damage gives you 10% damage when endurance is full (i. e. – not dodging).

If you’re standing still, you’re dead. If you’re not dodging, you’re dead. These are trait bonuses that require you not to be using any tactical abilities. Hence, you are a sitting duck able to be picked off without any hard effort.

yeah. enduring would be way better if there were ways to increase end regen.
like something that gives 50% end regen all the time. or +100% regen during a vigor buff, which you can have apply every time you gain swiftness or something.
Or if you got 10% end, every time you used a toolbelt skill.

At the same time, we have to rely entirely on dodge to evade. if only we had something like overcharged shot, to break chill, immobalize, cripple and leap back, evading. or rocket boost to break stun, chill, cripple, immobalize and leap back, evading.
Or maybe something like elixir S to evade. or blinds, we need more then 8 blind options. Or perhaps an elixir that instant fills our endurance.

Ok, seriously, that 10% with full end trait is really strong, and we have tons of ways to keep our endurance full.

The biggest problem is that you are encouraged to keep a full endurance, which means you have to not dodge to keep this damage increase.

As soon as you dodge, you have to wait anywhere from 4-10 seconds before you can get that benefit again. 4-10 seconds is quite a long time in a fight.