Guild Wars 2

Really, I’m at loss. Since we do not have a way of “measuring” our damage done, because the combat log only shows direct damage (not even dots, pff) and there is no dps meter, I’ll have to ask you more experienced fellows:

I would like to play a condition grenade engineer but everytime I see two different sides of the story:
- Some people state that grenadiers do not need any crit and are better off with carrion gear; also, the might stacks favor power too and vulnerability affects direct damage, so carrion is for the better.
- Some people state that grenadiers got many “on crit” procs and should roll rabid to proc those effects even more. Also, since grenades do low direct damage, power doesn’t benefit them much.

As you can see, I’m faced with these two options: many people suggested me in game one or the other way, and here on forum I read the same.

1) Taking into account that I would NOT like to roll full offensive gear (which would be rampager), which is the most “efficient” gear for a condi grenadier for wvw and pve? Rabid or Carrion? As you can see, I didn’t use the word “best” but efficient, meaning that I’m looking for the most damaging option (Yes, selfishly efficient option).

2) For a HGH grenadier, is it better to equip runes that increase might duration or runes that increase condition duration? Same for weapons: giver weapons that have a “built in” +10% condition duration or carrion/rabid weapon with sigil that increase bleed duration and also boost your condition damage? Here an example build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQBVymKid6KBWUvjIgKAYie8YQ2k95xblWQIA

3) For a build like this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQBVioKidqKtWUvjIgeAY1HeJqQ+95xblWQIA based on applying tons of burning, which gear would suit it the most? Since I’m spending 30 in firearms, I’m also getting 300 precision which add up crit; is this an invite to go for rabid or should I stick to carrion?

4) Last one: is berserker grenadier any good? Is the damage comparable to a condition grenadier or it’s far from it? In other words: what is the main source of damage for grenades, condition or power? Is berserker grenadier actually more suited for short encounters (since conditions take their time) or those 20 stacks of bleeds are overall superior anyways? I understand that conditions work in a lame way, but let’s assume I’m the only condition applier in my party.

Thanks for your attention, hoping you can shed light on these doubts that haunt me

I mostly play pvp
Answering because no one else did and you wrote a wall of txt

4) no – even with 25 stacks of might – damage and survivability on power engi is horrendous – of course its somewhat better in very short encounters but still..

3)dont like the build – no comment

2) you want 40% bleed duration and 50% burn duration max for any PvP condition engineer build imo – everything beyond that is expensive gear/traitwise and makes no sense because people cleanse anyway – in PvE you might want to try going for 80% bleed duration (or just max bleed duration as hard as you can without losing too much anyway..)

1)every nade engineer i have seen playing (with 1 exception) chooses rabid over carrion

Thanks for the answer, I’ll go for rabid

Run something like this w/ full Rabid/some Apoc in your jewelry slots: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-VRw;2cPVg0c-JRFx0;9;4T4-JE24A;408-5;0Vw;4hoHAhoHA2cq

HT/GK/BK/Rocket Boots.

The reason why you see two sides to the story is because there is more than one way to play a condi grenadier.

If you are talking about the carrion set, then you are probably referring to me. I should probably clear this up immediately: I don’t run a condi grenadier. I run a hybrid grenadier. For the hybrid, the extra power that comes from the carrion set is more valuable than the precision that comes from the rabid set. Recently I’ve converted my trinkets to rampager, but before then I had rabid w/ chrysocola jewels, getting a good mixture of power, precision, and malice all the same.

It is hard to answer your questions because it really comes down to build specifics. There are many things to consider:

A) Your source of burning. Many grenadier builds will use Incendiary Powder as their primary source of burning. Missing out on shrapnel, they need to go with Sharpshooter for their bleeding damage, and sharpshooter needs precision. However, with steady sources of burning from something like the bomb kit, the off-hand pistol, or the rocket turret, then incendiary powder becomes redundant, and dependency on sharpshooter lowers. Sharpshooter, of course, is inferior to shrapnel by a large margin; even at 100% crit rate, sharpshooter only gives around 0.9 bleed ticks per hit at base duration, whereas shrapnel gives 1.8 bleed ticks per hit regardless of build.

B) This is a compromise on offense or defense. Many will use the shield off hand, getting several notable defensive abilities, and lose the burning from this. Since the burn is more important than the bleed, they’ll go with incendiary powder. But offensive builds can get the off-hand burn, along with shrapnel, but lose the utilities that the shield gives. In this case, picking rabid or carrion is about whether you want an offensive or defensive build.

C)Fury uptime. HGH builds will often run with Elixir B and Hidden Flask, and sometimes with the Med Kit, so those builds will have an extremely high fury uptime, and often this fury can pus the crit rate high enough to plow through whatever ails you. On a carrion set this is quite the large boon to offense, but on a rabid set the presence of fury is meh; you don’t hit that much harder at all, and the procs from sharpshooter aren’t worth much anyway. To make good use of incendiary powder, a 24% crit rate is all you need, since you’ll be launching 3 attacks per second, so 4 out of 5 times you’ll proc incendiary powder within 2 barrages.

Confused yet? So is everyone else. Hence, why no one can really agree on the best way to run a grenadier. So, to answer your questions the best I can:

1)Carrion is more powerful if you have either high fury uptime or alternate sources of burning from incendiary powder. If you have neither, rabid is your way to go.

2)This is more complicated. In general, in might stacking builds it is best to stack might. Especially if you are forgoing Enhance Performance for Short Fuse. Grenadier builds can get 70% condition uptime easily with a rare veggie pizza, and two giver’s weapons boost that to 90%. Then, you can increase either bleed or burn duration with a single sigil to 100% (reserving one spot for Sigil of Battle), so you can have your rune set free to use whatever you want. Remember: more might means more power and more condition damage.

3)That looks a lot like my sPVP build. The precision vs. carrion debate here depends on the weapon. In sPVP I use the rifle, so the carrion amulet (rampager jewel) is much more fitting. However, with the pistol/shield, you’ll be relying more heavily on sharpshooter procs, so rabid is more valuable here.

4)Berserker grenadier is arguably the highest DPS at range in the game, in competition with rampager grenadier. Grenades, with grenadier trait, have a base damage of 321 that hits up to 5 targets at 1500 range. No other range skill comes close to that. The grenades also stack vulnerability really well, which improves direct damage done by everyone. Might stacking builds can get up to 875 additional condition damage from scratch, so the grenades will do even more damage with their bleeding.

I myself have a full berserker set as well as my hybrid set. Biggest advantage is that the berserker set doesn’t become redundant as soon as another condi set is around.

I run this for WvW roaming myself, and it works pretty well.
Remaining 10 points I put in either alchemy for the protection on disable or firearms for reduced pistol CD. If I use shield on offhand I’ll swap shrapnel for IP.

I do have rabid armors on my bag, but the PVT has kinda grown on me. Boosts my survivability a lot, which is pretty important when solo roaming since you have to fight outnumbered a lot. And with some vuln stacks the direct damage of granades is no joke.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

[…]

Thanks a lot for the in-depth answer, it was very appreciated.

From what you wrote, I understand that burning is a must in grenadier builds, whether it comes from IP or bombs or blowtorch but, if I’m running P/S (I like comboing the blast on shield with my fields), my only source of burning would become IP, which would lead to give up on sharpnel.

Now, would it be “fine” if I used sigil of earth on shield? That sigil has 60% chance to apply bleeding on critical hit that, coupled with sharpshooter, should make up for the loss on sharpnel… Here the build I had thought of http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqOlIqiY3zy3dEZ0DOrz2MQFAsPPYr0CCB-jgyAItASBAoKg5wioxWwiWNLIlvwqZwUpER1+gioVDA-e
Would that compensate for the loss on sharpnel or would it be even more favorable to go for flamethrower utility (even though that’d mean -1 utility slot) in exchange for sharpnel?

Thanks again for your attention

You could drop Short Fuse for Shrapnel.
Healthpool seems very low, you might wanna swap those rabid jewels for chrysocolas. Also, I don’t really understand why 30 in tools, since you can put 10 in alchemy and get near perma vigor.

Grenade Kit is not really a kit you want to spend a lot of time in. This is just my opinion though. It’s large nerf to its power scaling completely castrated zerker engineers, it’s 1 skill is not that useful anymore to be honest.

A condition grenadier is basically swapping to grenade kit to apply it’s bleed, poison and freeze, then swapping to bomb kit to apply it’s burn and confusion, then swapping to pistol to stack more bleed, poison and confusion. It’s a lot of kit swapping but it’s very effective and is more powerful than sitting in grenade kit most of the time.

Most if not all of these abilities are AoE to boot with great radius when traited.