Is condi better than power?
Talking about PvE.
I personally like condition builds more than direct damage builds but my answer is: it depends.
Since there is no (legal) DPS metre there is no way to answer your question, however I think it’s more a melee vs range comparison rather than condition vs direct damage.
For us, and in my experience, direct damage builds mean melee, this means you can’t continuously engage combat because, depending on the enemy, you have to move away/cover/ heal. This is a huge DPS loss. Condition builds are, instead, ranged (almost) and, usually, you can keep pressuring your enemy more than a direct damage.
Generally I think we have about equal DPS for condition vs melee and the problem is more like to use the build you prefer or the build you need. For example: in Silverwastes I prefer to use a condition build since the Hulks have an higher armor, while in normal open world I use a direct damage since I can’t use only a few skills for trash mobs (which means: greatswords auto-attacks and a few Gravediggers) and care less about cooldowns.
In PvE it depend also if you are facing many enemies with low hp or a big boss.
Against common or elite mobs the direct damage is better why your damage is immediate and frequently is AoE. Our condition weapon (scepter) is only 1 target, but also the RS grant poison and burn AoE. More or less to kill fast mid-low hp mobs the direct damage is always better.
But against a boss everything change why you have the time to stack all your maximum damage and keep it at best, expecially why you use a ranged weapon.
They’re both really good, I think, but I prefer condition damage against big bosses.
Anyway there’s classes like the engineer that can inflict more condition damage than us. But we’re still a good one.
Everything depends on your feelings about that.
For example, with my Necromancer(or Reaper) I can inflict more or less 2.5k/sec of Direct Damage to Tequatl (just to make an example of long fight) but with my Guardian condition I can spam 4-5k of burn damage, plus the direct damage.
You can do a thing that a lot of people ar doing: use the Viper(or Sinister) equipment and use both condition and direct damage to reach the best damage.
“Is condi better than dps?” is such a bad thing to write, and I see it everywhere. A condi build is a dps build, people should call them “power build” and “condi build”, not “condi build” and “dps build” >.>
And as for me, I have switched to the viper build I use while raiding. I’ve found it to be very successful for me overall, which is a nice change from the years of using power builds.
What did u guys use for hot?
This Hybrid Viper Build
or this Cavalier Build
I use the first the most but it’s kitten squishy, the second one is for Dragon’s Stand.