Guild Wars 2

For the following builds:

1. 3-kit Condition Based (Nade, Bomb, E-Gun) w P/S.

I am using Koi Cake but wondering if I should go defensive.
How much real benefit do you find stacking condition duration?

Elixir Infused Bomb Power Rifle Build

2. I am increasing healing power with Mango Ice Cream.

Should I just try to reduce conditions instead?

The best way to know is to test it yourself. How much defense you need is a personal thing, so buy 1 Bowl of Lemongrass Poultry Soup and give it a whirl. See if you notice a difference and if that difference is beneficial or not. See if it lets you adjust your traits/utilities to be more aggressive.

I like using koi cake + toxic focusing crystal so that my incendiary powder burn is up to 7 ticks

Still working through my koi cakes on my condi build. Some other popular foods are the mango pies, omnomberry pies, or the endurance regen one (forget the name of it offhand). If nothing else, you can just go for stat foods.

It sounds like your rifle build might be a healing build, in which case the ice cream is good if you’re wanted to put your healing ability to the max. However, I think something like the lemongrass poultry soup would probably be applicable in more situations, especially larger scale battles where you’re trying to support you teammates.

I often don’t even eat food because I’ve just never been conditioned to constantly using consumables. IMO, I feel like you should always consider the consumables just an added bonus and never base your builds off of them. In that sense, you can just go with whatever you think will give you the most added benefit.

I’d prefer WvW without it, but I guess it is nice to have that niche available since you already can’t do it in sPvP.

Koi Cake is perfect for condi builds, especially if you are aiming for confusion stacks.

I reckon the Candied Dragon Roll (lifesteal on crit) is better for your power build assuming you have precision.

The -Condi Duration stuff is probably next best for PvP, probably best for zerg stuff in particular because survival > everything else.

+/-40% condi duration is op

… well… 36% is cheap and 100 power / 10% crit in pve cuz dont need defense

I bought thousands of Koi Cake back when it was like 1 gold a stack.

Still working through those. It’s good in WvW for maintaining burning, but it’s also good in PvE for maintaining vulnerability.

I agree with others that when it comes to utility buff, Toxic is best.

Berengar.6951:

I like using koi cake + toxic focusing crystal so that my incendiary powder burn is up to 7 ticks

This. All other food buffs are inferior if you’re running condis, plain and simple.

I run a hybrid build and generally go with Orrian Truffle Steak with Toxic Oil, FWIW.

I will say that the koi cake/pizza and crystal recommendations for pure condi builds are the right way to go though.

if you’re a condi build and don’t run koi cake/veggie pizza and focusing crystal… well start running those things.

I’ve been using Artisan Maintenance Oil and Super Veggie Pizzas for quite awhile now.
Sure, there’s better options but I’m cheap.

I’m rather cheap by nature, so Koi Cakes work out well pretty well for condi builds.

Omnomberry Ghosts are also pretty good for crit damage builds, but they’re kinda pricey. I like them well enough that I keep them around anyway, but fire flank steak is a cheap alternative that I use for PvE.

When I need a defensive boost, I actually run Saffron Bread over Lemongrass Soup. It’s dirt cheap and adds some damage reduction in addition to the 20% condi reduction.

Loaf of Saffron Bread aka Anti-Hammer Train Bread
Incoming damage reduced by 20% while stunned, knocked down, or knocked back.
-20% condition duration
+10 Experience from kills.

For my direct damage bombnades(30/10/0/0/30, full zerk): Plate of Truffle Steak + Quality Maintenance Oil

For my SD bomb build (10/30/0/0/30): Plate of Truffle Steak + Hardened Sharpening Stone

For my grenadier hybrid build (30/10/0/0/30, rampager/carrion mix in PVE, 30/10/0/20/10 in WvW): Rare Veggie Pizza + Hardened Sharpening Stone.

I have found that Loaf of Saffron Bread is invaluable. Stabilized Armor, Protection Injection, and Saffron Bread provide -77% damage while stunned or knocked, on top of your base armor reduction. Combine this with AR and you have one nasty engineer to deal with.

Even after the nerf to AR, Saffron Bread will stack an additional -20% condition duration. I will probably readjust my runes to Anti Toxin at that point for -94% Condition Duration at 33% hp… what nerf?

How come people sell Toxic Focusing Crystal’s so cheap on the TP?

They are 24s38c right now, but the materials to craft them (3 Crystalline Dust, 100 Bloodstone Dust, 10 Pristine Toxic Spore Samples) adds up to a total of 88 silver!!

From what I can tell they don’t drop outright either? So are people just unloading excess stock they already crafted, or something else?

Edit: My bad! I see the recipe outputs 5 of them now. All good, move on by, nothing to see here

I use whatever dungeon potion im in and then truffle steak or candied dragon roll if i feel like i need some sustain. I run berserker 30/30/0/0/10

Spicy chicken with extra frying duration.

I like Captn Crunch. Just today I had some. It was berry berry.

I had shrimp scampi this evening with a side of jasmine rice. It was delicious