Guild Wars 2

Tried to search for this but it doesn’t look like anyone has mentioned it.

Is there a maximum buff from this? And is it per condition STACK or per unique condition? If it’s per stack without a max it could get CRAZY when paired with like a necro (or even on your own if you spec for conditions), but if it is per unique condition it is basically pointless.

Anyone know or tested?

Unique conditions of course. Does not effect condition damage either.

As much as people hate rng, I think a fun alternative would have been adding chill, weakness, or blind (alone or any combination thereof) as possible procs from rifle and pistol attacks. Much more interesting and useful than a boring, weak, flat damage buff.

As it is now you cant get enough conditions (except maybe on pve bosses) to benefit with rifle, and pistols are for condition builds so why would you even take the trait in the first place?

Pistol grenades and flopping back and forth. Condition damage as an added bonus but mostly build out for doing DD damage with grenades and pistol. Awesome AOE damage. I just started playing with it but I like it much more than my HGH grenade build for aoe damage because you have to try and keep up all the conditions which are also ticking away at the mob in itty bitty pieces.

this doesn’t really benefit most rifle builds at all.

Lightsbane.9012:

this doesn’t really benefit most rifle builds at all.

I dunno, seems like it’d be pretty nice if you’re running the modified “Sitting Duck” trait. Cripple, immobilize, and vulnerability applied every time you use Net Shot. 6% bonus damage for a couple seconds, and 4% for a decent while after that. Throw in Blunderbuss for the bleed on top of that, and its not bad. Not absolutely amazing, but not bad.

With rifle, unless you’re running with a necro, condition engi, or fighting a boss in PvE, Rifle Mod will always be the better choice over this trait. Even if you ran both at the same time, you’d be giving up the range or the cooldown traits, or the sitting duck trait, all arguably more useful to have than 4-6% increased damage.

Might be nice in PvE: a possible 16 – 24% damage buff at boss fights, especially world events.
Did anyone test if it works with the toolbelt skills with pistol or rifle equipped?

Saki Asakura.6479:

As much as people hate rng, I think a fun alternative would have been adding chill, weakness, or blind (alone or any combination thereof) as possible procs from rifle and pistol attacks. Much more interesting and useful than a boring, weak, flat damage buff.

For some reason your post reminded me of the ammo mods in Mass Effect. And that, in turn, got me thinking how much I’d love a sigil with an X% chance to knock down on critical hit.

darkace.8925:

Saki Asakura.6479:

As much as people hate rng, I think a fun alternative would have been adding chill, weakness, or blind (alone or any combination thereof) as possible procs from rifle and pistol attacks. Much more interesting and useful than a boring, weak, flat damage buff.

For some reason your post reminded me of the ammo mods in Mass Effect. And that, in turn, got me thinking how much I’d love a sigil with an X% chance to knock down on critical hit.

I’m willing to bet the only way they’d put knockdown on a sigil is on a 26-kills sigil, like Sigil of Sanctuary

I love a lot of the work done for Engineers in this patch, but I just don’t get this trait. As others have said it doesn’t make sense. Pistol builds have tons of conditions but don’t use +% damage increases, and rifle builds don’t put out a lot of conditions so this isn’t that helpful for those. Grandmaster trait? Really?

It’s great my Coated Bullets and Juggernaut are now Master traits but it seems like they’ve been replaced by pretty bad traits for Grandmaster tier. A 33% burn duration and a 4-8% damage bonus on rifle? Maybe 10% in groups. … Why?

Adamantium.3682:

I love a lot of the work done for Engineers in this patch, but I just don’t get this trait. As others have said it doesn’t make sense. Pistol builds have tons of conditions but don’t use +% damage increases, and rifle builds don’t put out a lot of conditions so this isn’t that helpful for those. Grandmaster trait? Really?

If they ever add condition duration/power food I’m keen to give this trait a shot on my power/cc hybrid rifle build. The uptime on cripple, vulnerability, burn, and bleed on top of the 10% damage boost from Rifle Mod and another 5% if I choose to run a Sigil of Force isn’t anything to sneeze at.

…You few advocating it with condition stacking… even ignoring the fact that it doesn’t boost condition damage, you do realize you would have to CONSTANTLY juggle FIVE conditions at once just to break even with a trait like Rifle Mod?

I guess the idea is to stack it with rifle mod? But there’s so many other traits, both in firearms and otherwise that seem like better picks.

Grimwolf.7163:

…You few advocating it with condition stacking… even ignoring the fact that it doesn’t boost condition damage, you do realize you would have to CONSTANTLY juggle FIVE conditions at once just to break even with a trait like Rifle Mod?

If you’re playing an engineer and dont have at LEAST 5 conditions up incidentally at all times either your build sucks or you should be playing a warrior or mesmer.. no offense.

How in God’s name would you maintain 100% up time on 5 or more separate conditions in a direct damage build?
I doubt it can be done in a condition build.

I assume unless it’s another poorly worded vague trait description, that the trait only affects rifle and pistol damage, correct? Not kits?

This needs to be 4% atleast per condi for PvP.

It’s meant for synergy in groups ofcourse.

10/30/0/30/0, 5% damage on bleeds 5% damage from boons and the potential to get 18% more damage from modified ammo add on the vulnerability you could potential stack upand your looking at an easy 30% more damage , people who run with high power hgh builds will benefit from this greatly i haven’t been able to test it much yet myself but i can easily see getting up and around 1k crits on pistol auto, just something for every one to think about

The necromancer has had something like this for awhile. It’s a pretty sweet trait in the right spots.

If the plan is to permanently upkeep conditions on a target, then it isn’t being done right. In general I like to assume that the target in sPVP will have at least 3 conditions on them, whatever they may be, so you can put it down as a 6% increase (roughly) in sPVP.

The real strength of this trait comes in PVE. When fighting temple bosses or dragon champions, they’ll have a permanent upkeep of bleed, poison, vulnerability, burn, and weakness (may have changed), so this is a flat 10% increase with spikes from blind, confusion, torment, cripple, chill, and immobilize for a total of 22% or so. Against champions this is quite a big damage buff, and it stacks with rifle mod and target the maimed.

This trait is best used on power builds conjunction with condition builds. Even power builds will apply conditions (vulnerability, blind, weakness, immobilize, burning, cripple, chill), so there is that benefit. But if you have a buddy condi mesmer who’kittenting them with everything they’ve got, then you’re good to o.

-Damage boost is based on individual conditions, not stacks.
-Damage boost does not apply to Condition damage
-Damage boost only applies when you have a Rifle or Pistol out, does not work with kits.

This trait is awesome for SD power builds:
- I think its multiplicative, not additive (iam not 100% sure, still testing)
- rotation: magnet+prybar (1st condition – confusion), immobilize (3 conditions: immobilize + vulnerability and criple from Sitting duck), burning from Incediary powder, bleed from Sharpshooter or Blunderbuss →

Your dmg including most traits (Rifle mod, Enduring damage) X 1,12 (6 conditions on target)

- allmost all the time youre using rifle

Okay, some of you have made good points.

I think my problem is that it fights for a spot with rifle mod in builds that I’m thinking of. Sitting Duck is basically a given at this point with rifle, and so is Hair Trigger to make it even better. Maybe this is the flaw in my plan, but I really like these two traits for anything rifle based.

So now I’m left with the choice of rifle mods, 10% damage always, or this new Modified Ammo for +10% damage sometimes. In groups when it really matters I guess you’re likely to get more than 5 conditions pretty easily, but I don’t think it’s permanent especially since most bosses cleanse a lot.

If we use a SD attack when wielding a pistol, the damage is increased?

“New Grandmaster trait—Modified Ammunition: Damage is increased by 2% per condition on the target, when wielding a pistol or rifle.”

Yes qjons, its should. All your direct physical dmg is increased by 2% per condition when wielding rifle or pistol = doesnt work when you have kit on.
This trait is clearly made for power or hybrid builds using rifle or pistol to deal dmg.

Hohou.1508:

This trait is awesome for SD power builds:
- I think its multiplicative, not additive (iam not 100% sure, still testing)
- rotation: magnet+prybar (1st condition – confusion), immobilize (3 conditions: immobilize + vulnerability and criple from Sitting duck), burning from Incediary powder, bleed from Sharpshooter or Blunderbuss ->

Your dmg including most traits (Rifle mod, Enduring damage) X 1,12 (6 conditions on target)

- allmost all the time youre using rifle

The problem is see in this is that you spend quite a long time, and blow quite a few skills to stack the conditions. And then have hardly anything left to throw at your target once you reach your max stacked conditions.
And without a hefty dose of Cond. Duration most conditions will have faded by the time you do.

Personally, i wouldnt give up either the 20% cooldown or the increase in range. And i’d never pick this over the guarenteed 10% damage boost.
So i think this trait is going to be quite underwhelming except for niche fights where other players help with keeping the target stacked (like a worldboss or something)

Yep I agree it was a nice idea but sadly their testing didn’t send up red flags as usual. I haven’t noticed any kind of damage buff at all when using it. It’s like i might as well be sticking with what I was doing before. And it doesn’t even benefit any of the kits much less the rifle. It’s like someone decided to put a first draft as a permanent item in the list without testing it at all to see if it worked.

And then the buffs for the thing are way too low, 2% per item comes nowhere close to the 150% the other classes received for their main system of condition damage and this is taking into account the problem of each class having their own condition damage base and how short lived those conditions are as well as the conditions that sound like they would be deadly but are a pin prick tickle to most things like poison. Remember when poison was serious business?

Useful for PvE world bosses, but only on our main weapon, not kits.
(Still not as good as Grenadier, which is effectively a 50% increase to grenade dps)

Can see the following becoming common with world bosses:

1. While waiting for world boss to spawn Eng sets Firearms 30 to Modified Ammo
2. When boss spawns, Eng walks to middle of crowd and presses 1 for autoattack
3. Player goes afk
4. Boss dies: player returns, raids chest and resets Firearms 30 trait to whatever it was before the event.

Zenguy.6421:

Useful for PvE world bosses, but only on our main weapon, not kits.
(Still not as good as Grenadier, which is effectively a 50% increase to grenade dps)

Can see the following becoming common with world bosses:

1. While waiting for world boss to spawn Eng sets Firearms 30 to Modified Ammo
2. When boss spawns, Eng walks to middle of crowd and presses 1 for autoattack
3. Player goes afk
4. Boss dies: player returns, raids chest and resets Firearms 30 trait to whatever it was before the event.

afk world bosses is about it.
where you are standing in place, afk firing.

Anywhere else, sitting duck is a given. Hair trigger 20% cdr on rifle skills is a superior dps gain. (cant get in close enough to use the attacks on world bosses). and of course rifle mod.

Basically still no choice here. there is 1 correct path.

It would probably work well for pistol. Stacking 2-4 conditions near 100% uptime. Pistols damage is already 60% direct, and 40% condition. This trait which effectively maintains that split in damage scaling.

Pistol direct damage is quite underwhelming if you ask me.

But conditions dont last very long unless you go for a condition build with a lot of condition duration. Things you can keep up pretty well are just Bleed, Poison and Burn. Thats 6% dmg you can count on fairly consistently.
I dont know if i’d ever want to trade the range, cooldown and piercing for something like ~6-8% dmg boost to just direct damage on my pistols.

The dumbest thing imo is that we have yet another big trait that doesnt work with kits. What gives Anet?

Well I’m seeing this new trait os gonna rock two places:
1. Might Stacking Pistol builds, like the HGH Grenades, and the builds like Maskaganda, they will often, very easy, have 4-6 different conditions up an running, and they all ready deal a very solid amount of power damage, yes Maskaganda I’m looking at your 4k Blowtroch crits! that would easy be able to deal a 10%+ more damage with that!

2. Rifle builds using Grenades, Bomb kit, or Elixir Gun, because even while it’s a pure power build, in my grenade builds, I will often have: Bleeding, Poison, Vulnerbillity, Chilled/Crippled and Immobilzed up and running! + that with the on and off burning, blind and confusion! (I run Grenade kit + Tool kit), and suddenly you will actually often have a 10-14% damage boost! Also, it will scale very very well when running with a group as people have said!
Edit: and also, you can still have Rifle Mod + Modified Ammunition, so seeing a flat 20% damage should be quite neat!

I just don’t like that it is a Grandmaster trait. To me, that says it’s build defining. This is clearly not, and to me it seems more like a first draft of something that could be worthy of that slot. I would be praising Anet if they introduced this in the Adept tier, there it would be cool.

Its a copy of necro master – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Target_the_Weak_

Really? I must admit that I feel the total different way, that it is a very build defining trait, at least it is for me? Traits like Hair Trigger, or Incenedary Powder, or speedy Kits, are traits I will pick i pretty much any build, and I do so most of the time, because they are great for that kind of stuff!
This trait on the other hand, is really for me, the topping of the Ice Cake, in builds where I only would be running 1 condition heavy kit, and most of the time would be using my main hand weapon, the rifle, or in a HGH build, with my pistol/Pistol!?
In a multi kit build I wouldn’t go that deep into firearms, because I would spend to little time in the main hand weapon for it!
But maybe not a grandmaster trait, but not an adept either! maybe It would have been better as a master? =) But then again, I tink most would want to pick this one and Rifle mod up in the same build, for some whicked auto attack damage hehe

The necro one works with every weapon and is a grandmaster minor trait, though.
Dunno, i can’t see it much useful if it only works with pistols and rifles.
If it worked with any weapon/kit, on the other hand…

Defiantly is a big downer it doesn’t work with kits

So is that 2 traits we have to spend a lot of points that others get by default? Necro’s 2% dmg per condition, and Ranger’s endurance regen?

My big question was does coated bullets work with Modified ammunition, according to the wording Modified Ammunition Modified Ammunition: Damage is increased by 2% per condition on the target, when wielding a pistol or rifle. but this ends up applying to all foes, making it a very good team fight trait as well.

Hebee.8460:

Its a copy of necro master – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Target_the_Weak_

Well thats just a kick in the teeth. Our grandmaster is a watered down version of a minor trait.
And its not like Necro’s have less Conditions then us anymore.