Player plays the game. MetaKitten plays the DPS meter on the golem.
Power/Condi dps comparison in OW?
I’ve not seen these comparisons and I don’t think you will; very few theorycrafters concern themselves with anything but what is meta.
Generally, In openworld, conditions are slow because few professions can stack them fast enough to make comparable damage to power builds in the short time mobs live during an encounter.
of the classes I’ve tried, only Berserker and Ranger can stack conditions large enough to compete with their power builds with the frequency and consistent necessary to make them effective in openworld.
I suspect the ground opens up a little bit in fractals where things take longer to die. You still need quite a high number of applicable conditions but if they stack and you can extend the durations, I believe they have been shown to overtake power builds on some classes, including necro
(edited by Obtena.7952)
I’ve not seen these comparisons and I don’t think you will; very few theorycrafters concern themselves with anything but what is meta.
Not sure where this is coming from. Don’t theory crafters by definition look for builds and strategies other than the meta?
Talked to someone about this yesterday too. If the theory-craft community is non existent that is because non meta builds no longer work as well as meta builds and any slight variations.
Power-crit builds do far more damage than condition damage builds but at a cost of player risk (usually). The best thing for you to do is carry equipment for both roles and switch as appropriate.
Against high-value targets like bosses that have the capability to down you with a shot or two, condition damage becomes better because good dps can be maintained at a safer range. (Some bosses do not let you stand there and spin to win all day so power dps suffers from the need to take defensive measures more often and Necromancer does not have a weapon that allows high power damage greater than the radius of great sword and dagger. Axe is only useful to stack vulnerability and claim aggro before closing the gap to the target and staff is a utility weapon used mainly for AoE tagging and break-bars.)
Against lesser mobs in open world or major bosses that are less active, power builds easily do more dps than condition damage, even when discounting the time to build max dps on bleed/poison stacks.
I’ve not seen these comparisons and I don’t think you will; very few theorycrafters concern themselves with anything but what is meta.
Not sure where this is coming from. Don’t theory crafters by definition look for builds and strategies other than the meta?
Talked to someone about this yesterday too. If the theory-craft community is non existent that is because non meta builds no longer work as well as meta builds and any slight variations.
I would like to think so but when was the last time you saw a theorycrafter say “Oh I think this build is cool, but it’s not meta”? Personally, I haven’t.
I’ve not seen these comparisons and I don’t think you will; very few theorycrafters concern themselves with anything but what is meta.
Not sure where this is coming from. Don’t theory crafters by definition look for builds and strategies other than the meta?
Talked to someone about this yesterday too. If the theory-craft community is non existent that is because non meta builds no longer work as well as meta builds and any slight variations.
I would like to think so but when was the last time you saw a theorycrafter say “Oh I think this build is cool, but it’s not meta”? Personally, I haven’t.
Do theory crafters even exist in this game anymore? Theres a hopeful one in revenant forums with a support build that looks promising but then again, it is revenant, any glint involved build looks promising until tested.
BTW if theory crafters are still commenting on meta builds then they arent really theory crafters, cant blame them though
I haven’t seen any recently but when I did, the LAST thing they were interested in doing was non-meta analysis. I predicted meta-death when HoT arrived and I think it’s the case. We are better off for it because people like the OP learn and discover builds based on what they like and test, not based on what some excel guy can do with formulas; real gameplay vs. made up fantasy.
(edited by Obtena.7952)
In open-world, GS power is better since it has way more burst damage. Everything dies in a few seconds in open-world, so you won’t even be able to get more than a few stacks of bleeding.
The same is true of T1/T2 fractals.
However starting in T3 fractals, many bosses start to have insane amounts of health. Also enemy armor maxes out at fractal 50, but condition damage ignores armor. Because of these 2 together, Viper condi is better in T3/T4 fractals.
This is a story from my engi, but…
On my fully ascended viper condi engi, I threw a single shrapnel grenade at a jotun and waited for him to die. He did so ten seconds later, with a little duration left on the bleeding. A one shot kill, but it took ten seconds.
I stacked several bleeds and burns on the next one who died in five seconds. Most of my conditions ended with less than half their damage done.
Still on my condi build/gear I killed the last with four shots of grenade kit 1, which is power and vuln with no condition damage, in about four seconds. I might have got him faster in berserker gear.
I think this sums up open world condi pretty well — you spend most of your time waiting for conditions to tick, and a lot of your damage is wasted when the trash mob dies.
I wouldn’t bother with damaging conditions in “normal” open world play except to cast Epidemic on zerg bosses surrounded by adds. That works fine in berserker gear, by the way.
If you plan to seek out open world champions and solo them, sure try condi.
Vulnerability is great though. Always use you vuln skills if it’s not at 25. So many people think 25 vuln just happens, when in open world and dungeon pugs it very frequently doesn’t.
As for fractals, I agree with BlasiuS.
(edited by Morte.5916)
To add my two cents, i do every type of content on a daily basis as a valk/cav or valk/vitzerk power reaper, (base Necro in WvW) and i’m fully geared.
In raids, i pull a consistent 24-28k dps depending on teammates and boss hp (+20% damage under 50%) and boss armor (VG/gor is a good 26k dps all the time with my guild group, unknown with pugs)
Open world (unpartybuffed) you can expect around 16k-18k, depending on how well you play and manage shroud, as shroud is actually a small damage increase due to personal might stacks open-world, and with cavalier trinkets/back, taking Death Magic (Surprise!)
I’m one of the few remaining theorycrafting power necros around, sadly, but it’s still a load of fun to play, and isn’t a liability in anything, really, despite what some say.
The reason for that is because it’s not something a group needs to worry about, res, or heal due to selfheals/natural tankyness, it provides good support for sloth from transfusion (i’ve prevented a few wipes!), gives some decent offhealing, and certaintly isn’t a crazy damage loss in most cases over a guardian or revenant, it’s just they provide totally different and arguably better ways of helping out.
Although i am a bit biased, but the main reason why my guild lets me stick with it is because i actually know what i’m doing, and the surefire way for success is mostly personal knowledge of game mechanics rather than class choice.
Oh yeah, my numbers doing dummy tests with half-real buffs are 22-23k with variance on a shroud rotation, 24-26k on standard rotation with d/w / gs.
If you have any questions, PM me, i know a few tricks with it!
PS: if someone looks at my post history, embarrassingly, my older shroud builds made a week after HoT came out, and slightly before raids were released, overkilled armor a bit, they still work totally fine, it’s just the softcap for armor is 2.8-2.9k, so it’s kind’ve wasting a bunch of stats, after experimenting valk/cav mixed with zerk weapons is best for open world/small content, and valk/vitzerk is best for raids because of the damage increase / furious maintenance oil.
Edit: Last edit, really! i don’t have as much experience in SPvP since due to the stats there, and the lack of foods, power builds are pretty much crap, and i usually use my guardian or rev for that.
(edited by Scott Lockharte.3412)
Scott, with Rise, I find I need zero toughness in PvE. You might revisit your Cavalier equipment – maybe toss a bit of Zealot’s or Assassin’s in for critical hit chance out of Shroud.
For the rest, I wish I could raid as a power reaper but the meta-pressure… Good job on challenging the norm.
I must admit to becoming addicted to shouts for their generally short cast time and cool down despite being weaker than fixed skills like wells or signets.
Without Rise and LF traits, power reaper would be so much squishier! It’s like being a blink-tank instead of a magic class playing melee just begging to be downed. (Ah, the memories of game release.)
This is a story from my engi, but…
On my fully ascended viper condi engi, I threw a single shrapnel grenade at a jotun and waited for him to die. He did so ten seconds later, with a little duration left on the bleeding. A one shot kill, but it took ten seconds.
I stacked several bleeds and burns on the next one who died in five seconds. Most of my conditions ended with less than half their damage done.
Still on my condi build/gear I killed the last with four shots of grenade kit 1, which is power and vuln with no condition damage, in about four seconds. I might have got him faster in berserker gear.
I think this sums up open world condi pretty well — you spend most of your time waiting for conditions to tick, and a lot of your damage is wasted when the trash mob dies.
I wouldn’t bother with damaging conditions in “normal” open world play except to cast Epidemic on zerg bosses surrounded by adds. That works fine in berserker gear, by the way.
If you plan to seek out open world champions and solo them, sure try condi.
Vulnerability is great though. Always use you vuln skills if it’s not at 25. So many people think 25 vuln just happens, when in open world and dungeon pugs it very frequently doesn’t.
As for fractals, I agree with BlasiuS.
That’s a good anecdote but I don’t think the conclusion is that zerkers is necessarily better, especially if you can stack ridiculous amounts of condi like a Ranger. Despite how good the stats look, Viper is actually not an ideal stat set for openworld conditions because as your story demonstrates, you sacrifice condition damage for duration.
Conditions in Openworld need to tick hard, not long. An optimal condi build on openworld content is a mix of sinister and zerkers, the split determined by how frequently and how many conditions you can stack. With a weapon like scepter on necro, I’m 100% sinister since the direct damage is garbage anyways.
For instance, my necro has two condi builds; both use scepter but one is giving me lots of duration, the other one gives me condi damage. The Former for soloing champs and dungeons, the latter for openworld.
Scott, with Rise, I find I need zero toughness in PvE. You might revisit your Cavalier equipment – maybe toss a bit of Zealot’s or Assassin’s in for critical hit chance out of Shroud.
For the rest, I wish I could raid as a power reaper but the meta-pressure… Good job on challenging the norm.
I must admit to becoming addicted to shouts for their generally short cast time and cool down despite being weaker than fixed skills like wells or signets.
Without Rise and LF traits, power reaper would be so much squishier! It’s like being a blink-tank instead of a magic class playing melee just begging to be downed. (Ah, the memories of game release.)
Yes that’s definitely a option! There’s two real open-world shroud builds out there, Blood magic with rise / Valk, and death magic with Any utility / Cav (Usually plague or locust signet for me personally.)
The reason i say to go cavalier, is that shroud itself is a damage increase open-world due to the might stacks from Reaper’s Might in spite, and cavalier/death magic as a combo, adds 24% converted stats, actually giving you more overall damage AND other personal effects (shrouded removal!) while in shroud, since signet of spite doesn’t function there.
And DM gives unholy sanctuary, which is a godsend pretty much everywhere, and i’d argue that the DM build is better than other power builds on matthias due to it.
But either work, it isn’t such a big deal since it IS open-world, it’s just some efficiency differences.
Edit: didn’t respond to your first bit completely, The crit chance is 90% all the time, which is more than enough open-world and without spotter/banners, it’s 100% with the DM/Cav raid version (For matthias) regardless of spotter/banners and the valk/vitzerk version with furious maintenance oil is a damage increase over running actual zerker gear since you’ll have 100% crit regardless of anything you do due to a combination of decimate defenses (Decimate is 50%, base is 4%, fury is 20%, and just vitzerk trinkets is +26% or so.) and other things, you take accuracy/force sigils with the cav build, and air/force with a valk build, which puts you at exactly 90% for cav and OVER 100% for valk
Edit: Here’s the aforementioned builds:
Valk/BM: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhFakjGapxaawyGYvxCugNN2aCVh4r4XcMCNACAtAA-TBCBABQcKAyS5HW7PwoSwAeiCAcgCuU9n8038NgAYQQIQIECr1atWdMChQQKgB2ZB-e
Quite a few traits can be swapped around, but this just gives you a idea, and i run both of these personally.
(edited by Scott Lockharte.3412)
Conditions in Openworld need to tick hard, not long. An optimal condi build on openworld content is a mix of sinister and zerkers, the split determined by how frequently and how many conditions you can stack. With a weapon like scepter on necro, I’m 100% sinister since the direct damage is garbage anyways.
That does sound quite plausible. Maybe it’s not for the Melandru second beacon tagging frenzy, but for a lot of harder open world PvE I could believe that does well.