Guild Wars 2

(TLDR available)

Greetings fellow Engineers,

I have been playing my Engineer with Grenadier (3 Grenades), Incendiary Powder (Burn on Crit) and Napalm Specialist (+Burn Duration) since the beginning.
The last few Game Updates changed some traits (probably because of all the HGH builds) and made me rethink my trait selection. Note that I don’t play structured PvP and did this analysis with Grenade Kit and PvE/WvW in mind.

First Incendiary Powder was changed to:

• 100% chance to inflict burning for 4 seconds on critical hits. This effect can only trigger once every 10 seconds.

Then Napalm Specialist was moved up one tier to Grandmaster and now reads:

• Burns you apply last 33% longer.

Because i only have 20 Points in Firearms, Napalm Specialist is now no longer available to me and because of all the changes my burning uptime went from about 90%-100% down to about 50%.

So i did some theorycrafting to compare Incendiary Powder to

Shrapnel:

• Explosions have a 15% chance to cause bleeding.

because it uses the same Trait slot and therefore would be an easy replacement.
Base duration of this bleed is 12 seconds.

I used my PvE Stats as a base:

• 505 Condition Damage (unbuffed)
• Level 80
• +30% Condition Duration

I also made some Assumptions:

1. For Incendiary Powder: Crit Chance is high enough so the fire always gets reapplied ASAP. (Best Case) (Not unrealistic with grenade kit and 50%+ crit chance.)
2. For Shrapnel: Every Grenade hits. (Best Case)

I also used average values for Shrapnel because of the 15% chance.

Attachments 1 and 2 show the results for my stats for single target damage.

We can see that:

• For (single target) fights that last less than 5 seconds Incendiary Powder is vastly superior.
• For fights that last less than 10 seconds it still has the advantage.
• For fights between 10 and 15 seconds both are about even.
• For fights longer than 15 seconds shrapnel will do more damage on average.

The tables in attachment 3 show the ratio of Shrapnel Damage to Burn Damage for different Character Levels and Condition Damage.
Example:

• 20 Second Fight – level 80 – 500 Condition Damage.
  -> Ratio: 1.24 (Shrapnel damage is 1.24 times Burn Damage so Shrapnel did 24% more damage)

We can see that Shrapnel profits more from Condition Damage and always does more damage in fights that take 20 seconds or longer – regardless of level or condition damage.

Condition duration:

• DoTs only tick every full second.
• If you have 0% the burn will last 4 seconds and the bleed will last 12 seconds.
• at 10% the burn will last 4.25 seconds (rounded down to the nearest quarter second) and the bleeding will last 13 seconds. So the bleed will get another tick while the burn will not.
• at 25% the burn lasts 5 seconds and the bleeding 15 seconds. so burn gets another tick and bleeding gets 3.
• at 45% burn lasts 5.75 seconds and the bleeding lasts 17.25 seconds. Meaning that the burn still only ticks 5 times while the bleeding will tick 17.

• This means that if you have 20%, 45% or 70% condition duration (just short of the burn getting another tick) shrapnel will profit a lot more.

Condition Removal:

• Probably won’t happen in PvE very often but Shrapnel should have the advantage because the bleeding can be reapplied immediately and the burn has a 10 sec cd.

AoE:

• As soon as you hit multiple enemies Shrapnel damage outclasses the burning damage almost immediately, because even if you hit 5 enemies with an explosion and all 5 crit – only 1 enemy will start burning. Shrapnel does not have this restriction and 1 explosion can apply bleeding on up to 5 enemies (I tested this behaviour)

Pistol/Rifle:

• Incendiary Powder will apply to Pistol, Rifle and Shield attacks.
• Shrapnel will not apply to Pistol, Rifle and Shield attacks. (not even pistol 1)

Conclusion/TLDR – When using the Grenade Kit:

• If you only attack single targets and kill them in 15 seconds or less. go with Incendiary Powder.
• If you attack multiple enemies and/or fights take 20 seconds or longer or you expect a lot of Condition Removal on your enemies go with Shrapnel.

I personally will use Shrapnel with the Grenade Kit for PvE and WvW now.

Good work, thanks for sharing.

I’ll still stick to Inc. Powder for WvW because in zergs i dont run any risks and i can freely chuck grenades.
But i also roam or do group stuff in WvW. Then the Inc. Powder is much more usefull. And i dont feel like constantly changing traits. And consistently landing grenades (for shrapnel) in a small fight or 1on1 is much harder then hitting with anything to proc inc. ammo.

True – in small, fast WvW Skirmishes Shrapnel loses a lot of what makes it good. But when spamming from a wall or invis bombing (swiftness → stealth → jump from wall → run towards enemies throwing grenade 4, grenade 2 and grenade toolbelt and have them hit at about the same time) Shrapnel does a lot more damage. (though not up front)

Terrahero.9358:

Good work, thanks for sharing.

I’ll still stick to Inc. Powder for WvW because in zergs i dont run any risks and i can freely chuck grenades.
But i also roam or do group stuff in WvW. Then the Inc. Powder is much more usefull. And i dont feel like constantly changing traits. And consistently landing grenades (for shrapnel) in a small fight or 1on1 is much harder then hitting with anything to proc inc. ammo.

Inc. Powder is single target burn. Schrapnel is effectively AoE, unless there is a internal cd im not aware of. These charts are for single target, so for large scale battles Schrapnel is obvious winner by a mile.

But for small scale Inc. Powder much more reliable correct.

Brtwrst.9312:

AoE:

• As soon as you hit multiple enemies Shrapnel damage outclasses the burning damage almost immediately, because even if you hit 5 enemies with an explosion and all 5 crit – only 1 enemy will start burning. Shrapnel does not have this restriction and 1 explosion can apply bleeding on up to 5 enemies (I tested this behaviour)

This.

PvE/WvW Zerg: Use Shrapnel.
WvW small fights/ PvP: use Incendiary Powder.

Brtwrst.9312:

(TLDR available)

Greetings fellow Engineers,

I have been playing my Engineer with Grenadier (3 Grenades), Incendiary Powder (Burn on Crit) and Napalm Specialist (+Burn Duration) since the beginning.
The last few Game Updates changed some traits (probably because of all the HGH builds) and made me rethink my trait selection. Note that I don’t play structured PvP and did this analysis with Grenade Kit and PvE/WvW in mind.

First Incendiary Powder was changed to:

• 100% chance to inflict burning for 4 seconds on critical hits. This effect can only trigger once every 10 seconds.

Then Napalm Specialist was moved up one tier to Grandmaster and now reads:

• Burns you apply last 33% longer.

Because i only have 20 Points in Firearms, Napalm Specialist is now no longer available to me and because of all the changes my burning uptime went from about 90%-100% down to about 50%.

So i did some theorycrafting to compare Incendiary Powder to

Shrapnel:

• Explosions have a 15% chance to cause bleeding.

because it uses the same Trait slot and therefore would be an easy replacement.
Base duration of this bleed is 12 seconds.

I used my PvE Stats as a base:

• 505 Condition Damage (unbuffed)
• Level 80
• +30% Condition Duration

I also made some Assumptions:

1. For Incendiary Powder: Crit Chance is high enough so the fire always gets reapplied ASAP. (Best Case) (Not unrealistic with grenade kit and 50%+ crit chance.)
2. For Shrapnel: Every Grenade hits. (Best Case)

I also used average values for Shrapnel because of the 15% chance.

Attachments 1 and 2 show the results for my stats for single target damage.

We can see that:

• For (single target) fights that last less than 5 seconds Incendiary Powder is vastly superior.
• For fights that last less than 10 seconds it still has the advantage.
• For fights between 10 and 15 seconds both are about even.
• For fights longer than 15 seconds shrapnel will do more damage on average.

The tables in attachment 3 show the ratio of Shrapnel Damage to Burn Damage for different Character Levels and Condition Damage.
Example:

• 20 Second Fight – level 80 – 500 Condition Damage.
  -> Ratio: 1.24 (Shrapnel damage is 1.24 times Burn Damage so Shrapnel did 24% more damage)

We can see that Shrapnel profits more from Condition Damage and always does more damage in fights that take 20 seconds or longer – regardless of level or condition damage.

Condition duration:

• DoTs only tick every full second.
• If you have 0% the burn will last 4 seconds and the bleed will last 12 seconds.
• at 10% the burn will last 4.25 seconds (rounded down to the nearest quarter second) and the bleeding will last 13 seconds. So the bleed will get another tick while the burn will not.
• at 25% the burn lasts 5 seconds and the bleeding 15 seconds. so burn gets another tick and bleeding gets 3.
• at 45% burn lasts 5.75 seconds and the bleeding lasts 17.25 seconds. Meaning that the burn still only ticks 5 times while the bleeding will tick 17.

• This means that if you have 20%, 45% or 70% condition duration (just short of the burn getting another tick) shrapnel will profit a lot more.

Condition Removal:

• Probably won’t happen in PvE very often but Shrapnel should have the advantage because the bleeding can be reapplied immediately and the burn has a 10 sec cd.

AoE:

• As soon as you hit multiple enemies Shrapnel damage outclasses the burning damage almost immediately, because even if you hit 5 enemies with an explosion and all 5 crit – only 1 enemy will start burning. Shrapnel does not have this restriction and 1 explosion can apply bleeding on up to 5 enemies (I tested this behaviour)

Pistol/Rifle:

• Incendiary Powder will apply to Pistol, Rifle and Shield attacks.
• Shrapnel will not apply to Pistol, Rifle and Shield attacks. (not even pistol 1)

Conclusion/TLDR – When using the Grenade Kit:

• If you only attack single targets and kill them in 15 seconds or less. go with Incendiary Powder.
• If you attack multiple enemies and/or fights take 20 seconds or longer or you expect a lot of Condition Removal on your enemies go with Shrapnel.

I personally will use Shrapnel with the Grenade Kit for PvE and WvW now.

You know, sometimes you wonder: "Mmmm… Shrapnel looks interesting for grenadier… I wonder if I shall use it instead of IP ? Bah… everybody uses IP, better stick with it…

And then you show up with this very comprehensive analysis ! Thanks for that !!!

I also run with grenadier and want to go +100% condi duration, so I will definitly give a try to shrapnel, thanks to your post.

Keep up the good work !

Happy to help

Brtwrst.9312:

Condition Removal:

• Probably won’t happen in PvE very often but Shrapnel should have the advantage because the bleeding can be reapplied immediately and the burn has a 10 sec cd.

I don’t think this is necessarily a good assumption. Against enemies with condition removal, a short-duration, high-DPS burn may well get a lot more damage in than a long-duration, low-DPS bleed.

If the burn gets removed immediately then you lose a lot of DPS and have to wait 10 seconds to retrigger it, but your opponent might not have a full condition clear and may fail to remove it immediately even if they try, resulting in a lot of the damage getting through. On the other hand, a 17+ second bleed is almost certainly going to get removed at some point during its long duration by an opponent who can remove conditions, so at least some of the damage will fail to get through as well.

Also, as burning is a much higher DPS condition than bleed, it may benefit you for tagging targets in zerg fights. Something getting hit in a zerg fight often has only a few seconds to live, so if you priority is maximizing loot, Incendiary Powder may give you n edge there as it will help you secure a tag every 10 seconds.

Good work. I love seeing this kind of analysis. I’m glad to see that one trait is not superior to another. As other posters have mentioned, Shrapnel is to AoE/Long-term and Incendiary Powder is to Single/Short-term.

I do have one question though. How was the damage for Shrapnel calculated? I realized that you (Brtwrst.9312) stated you used average values due to the 15% chance but that isn’t clear to me.

Bleeding DPS = (0.05*cndDMG) + (0.5*lvl) + 2.5

(using my PvE Stats)
Average Bleeding Damage per 10s =

• BleedDPS (67.75) *
• Duration (15s) *
• Grenades thrown in 10 seconds (30) *
• Chance to apply bleeding per Grenade (0.15)

=4573

You might notice that i used 15s for the duration even though i calculate for 10 second intervals. This is because in longer fights you will have some stacks from the last 10 seconds carry over and do additional damage. Turns out that to factor in this damage you just have to multiply by the “real” duration.

So the 4573 Damage only apply when your stacks are in full “swing”
For the first 10 Seconds you have to multiply that number by 1/3.
And for the next 10 seconds (10-19) you have to multiply it by about 0.9.
I found these numbers (1/3 and 0.9) by calculating the damage second by second and they only apply to Condition Durations 25 or 30. When you have higher condition duration it takes longer to get to the equilibrium but you also have more stacks ticking simultaneously when you reach it.

As for the average values. I assumed that you apply 1 stack of bleed with 15 % chance.
If you are lucky and apply 6 stacks with your first 2 throws you’re gonna have a good time. Vice Versa when you don’t apply any with your first few throws your damage will be kitten. So the chart only shows the absolute average case.

Probably worth noting things in terms of stacks of bleeding, since the shrapnel procs don’t require anything other than hitting with explosions.

Spamming nades as often as possible will result in 5.7 * condition duration stacks of bleeding on average.

1.3 1.7 and 1.8 condition duration will result in 7.4 9.7 and 10.3 stacks of bleeding on average.

The ultimate damage numbers will vary quite a bit depending on your gear, but the number of bleeding stacks won’t change.

Ok so i thought about the Simultaneous Stacks thing and came up with my own results.
First – i cannot figure out how you get to 5.7*ConditionDuration.
My thoughts:

• With 0 Condition Duration Shrapnel bleed lasts 12 seconds.
• In 12 Seconds you can throw up to 36 Grenades.
• 36 Grenades * 15% Chance = 5.4

So if anything the formula should be 5.4*ConditionDuration.

But there is another problem.
This formula does not care for the fact, that bleed damage only ticks when the duration reaches a multiple of a full second. You have to factor that in if you want the “effective simultaneous stacks”.

Picture 1 is a Table with all 3 Ways to calculate it. (Delta x = 10%)

• The column labeled 1 is “5.7*Duration”. (Your Method)
• The column labeled 3 is “5.4*Duration”.
• The column labeled 2 shows the results when you factor in that condition duration has to reach a new full second to be effective. (Effective Simultaneous Stacks)

Picture 2 shows the 3 Different Methods in a Chart (The Delta x i used for this chart is 1% so i calculated 100 points for each line to get an accurate result)

• We can see that the “Effective Simultaneous Stacks” (Green Line) stay on the same level for a while and always increase at specific breakpoints.

I filtered these breakpoints and list them in picture 3.

So the only thing to figure out is exactly how many grenades you can throw in 12 seconds. I tested it by measuring 1 minute and counting how many throws i can do in that time. I counted exactly 60 throws in 60 seconds and used that as a basis from that on.

I might be wrong though. If you can – please explain how you get to 5.7*Condition Duration.

At 500 Condition damage:

1 Shrapnel = 675 damage (over 10s, not 12s, because of incendiary powders recharge)

1 Incendiary Powder = 1812 damage

If you can get Shrapnel on 3 times, you out damage Incendiary Powder at 500 condition damage.

Every 20 hits, you should get 3 bleeding stacks from shrapnel (15/100 is the chance, reduced to 3/20ths). Thus, if you have 20 times, there is a good chance you will out damage Shrapnel.

To get twenty hits with grenades, you’d have to throw:

1 Grenade barrage = 8/20
4 more grenades = 20/20

There is a half second after cast with grenades, meaning you can throw grenades 10 times over 10s. In total, you can throw 1 grenade barrage and 9 normal throws. Assuming all of these hit, you can hit a target 1 * 8 + 9 * 3 times or 8 + 27 = 35 times.

Unfortunately, these bleeding ticks will mostly overlap into incendiary powders next tick of damage. It’s really the build up time on single targets that kills this trait. However, with enough AoE, that 35 hits turns into 70, and 105, etc etc. More than enough hits to make this trait very useful.

Every grenade hits is a ridiculous assumption.

Dojo.1867:

Every grenade hits is a ridiculous assumption.

It is when you fight moving single targets outside of melee range yes.

But against a stationary target, groups of enemies or when you 1v1 a champion Mob (that has no evasion) its not that unrealistic – its just difficult to pull off.

But this is one of the inherent weaknesses of grenades and its the reason why they are not really useful in PvP. sadly.
For example against Mai in the Aetherblade Dungeon i don’t even bother trying to use the Grenade kit (or Shrapnel for that matter). I just use pistol/shield with incendiary ammo.

I’ve been using shrapnel over incendiary powder for awhile on all of my grenadier builds, and I don’t plan to make that change any time soon. This is largely a build choice, and done for several reasons:

#1: I prefer carrion to rabid, and IP needs crits to really be effective. Shrapnel does not. This is mostly for sPVP, since in PVE and WvW I use a carrion/rabid mix with zerker thrown in, and with Elixir B’s fury I achieve a 50% crit rate very easily.

#2: Nearly every build I make with grenades has alternative methods of applying burns. When using pistol/pistol, pistol #4 provides a long duration cone burn by itself. In sPVP and tPVP, post-bug fix rocket turret provides a near permanent AoE burn, and combined with the supply crate it does apply a permanent AoE burn. In PVE I’ll also run bomb kit alongside of the grenade kit, and this has another AoE burn on a short recharge. Add all of these together, and Incendiary Powder becomes redundant and relatively ineffective very quickly.

In contrast, the engineer does not have many alternate good sources for bleeding. There’s the 30% chance on crits, the pistol auto attack (which sucks for bleeds), the Elixir Gun auto attack (which hits only one target), the rifle turret (which also kind of sucks at it), and then grenade #2. Now, while grenade #2 is quite awesome, it is really nice to have other grenade skills that cause bleed as well.

If you aren’t running grenadier (shrapnel with the bomb kit kind of sucks), or you are running grenadier but don’t have any alternate sources of burning going, then incendiary powder is great for that build. But if you are running a grenadier build, I’d highly recommend using Shrapnel and going with one of the many great sources for permanent burn that the engineer has.

For each second you’re attacking, you’ll hit 3 + 5*(1+toolbelt recharge rate) / 30. With no points in tools, that comes out to 3.1667 hits per second.

3.1667 * 0.15 * 12 = 5.7

It goes up to 5.79 at 30 points in tools.

Knox.8962:

For each second you’re attacking, you’ll hit 3 + 5*(1+toolbelt recharge rate) / 30.

Fair enough

i did not include Grenade Barrage because of the buggy/unclear behaviour
(when all grenades from grenade barrage hit an enemy directly for example when you throw a barrage “through” an enemy only 6 hits register. – when 7 grenades hit the ground around a target and the 8th hits directly only 7 hits will register)

Brtwrst.9312:

Dojo.1867:

Every grenade hits is a ridiculous assumption.

It is when you fight moving single targets outside of melee range yes.

But against a stationary target, groups of enemies or when you 1v1 a champion Mob (that has no evasion) its not that unrealistic – its just difficult to pull off.

But this is one of the inherent weaknesses of grenades and its the reason why they are not really useful in PvP. sadly.
For example against Mai in the Aetherblade Dungeon i don’t even bother trying to use the Grenade kit (or Shrapnel for that matter). I just use pistol/shield with incendiary ammo.

I think a lot of PvP engis are quoting thusly: “?????????????????”

Let me rephrase that.
[…] the reason why i don’t like grenades in PvP.

Wow, awesome research. Like Blood Red Anarchid has said, I’ve run into the same conclusion. I run pistol/pistol and rocket boots. If I can get rocket kick and blow torch off, IP really isn’t necessary so I’ll probably make the switch to shrapnel. If you don’t have a reliable way for burning, go with IP. Even if it might do a little less damage in the end, it’s an extra condition on top of bleeds, making it harder to remove.

I’m wondering though, would it be viable to give up grenade recharge or extra grenade for shrapnel?

You should always use Grenadier if you are using grenades for a source of damage. It improves the effectiveness of damage, conditions, and accuracy by 50%, making it one of the most potent traits in the game. You can get away with not using grenadier if you are just using the grenades for a poison field or for the blind/chill, but grenadier still makes those 50% more effective.

Also, grenadier makes shrapnel 50% more effective, too. If anything, for a grenadier you’d want something like Shrapnel, Enhance Performance/Short Fuse/Explosive Powder, and Grenadier to top it all off. The hard part is picking a good master trait: Short fuse increases the main bleed and the condition effectiveness by 20%, but they’re already pretty fast so with all the kit swapping it might be redundant. Explosive Powder gives a straight up damage increase, but its only worthwhile on carrion builds/power builds. Enhance performance gives might for a direct increase to damage, but only works during heals, but nonetheless goes well with might stacking builds.