Power vs Condi in raid?
There is.
If you are filling a role of support or utility in the raid (aka you are not participating in a hardcore PvE guild meeting or something) – Power opens the use of Staff for you. Once you decided to equip the weapon – power has already increased your DPS spot on.
But to be honest – both are equally viable. The only thing you need is to know why did you bring the setup you did.
~If your squad is good at mechanics but sucks at rotations or don’t have the equipment for DPS – you might as well go conditions to maximize the damage and use heals only as an emergency.
~If your squad has problems with mechanics – you definitely want to ignore your personal DPS that is extremely low regardless, and go with Power and Staff to maximize CAF uptime.
If we ignore the “situation”, then Power builds also bring a lot more utility and CC to the table. LB brings knockback for BreakBars, Seekers at red, can Stealth-shake off NPCs (like at Sebetha) or OH Axe can pull spirits at Gorseval that were left behind; offers reflect / deflect…
So if you need mechanics, Power definitely brings more of it at a slight cost of DPS.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Fully agree with everything that Tragic mentioned above.
I would like to add that power builds are often brought to cover fury downtime in a group also. This is because of the clarion bond trait proccing on pet swap. You also have the option to run an offhand warhorn if there are literally no other sources of fury, however it’s usually better to just ask the ele’s to heatsink every once in a while.
Fully agree with everything that Tragic mentioned above.
I would like to add that power builds are often brought to cover fury downtime in a group also. This is because of the clarion bond trait proccing on pet swap. You also have the option to run an offhand warhorn if there are literally no other sources of fury, however it’s usually better to just ask the ele’s to heatsink every once in a while.
About Fury, a Tiger can technically just fill 80% of the uptime by itself.
The rest, yep, Clarion bond or Warhorn can do the trick.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
Condi is terrible in Stronghold of the Faithful, and it’s fairly Meh in Salvation Pass.
It’s quite good in Spirit Vale tho, i’ll give it that.
Power druids bring 2 projectile destruction source, axe 5 and staff 5.
Power druids do better on moving targets that don’t sit in Bonfire.
Power druid weapons give them more dodges.
Power druids, by nature of power builds, help you burn down short lived adds faster than the ramp up of a condi druid.
Most importantly, the inability to flank doesn’t hurt you nearly as much as that of a condi druid who can’t flank with his shortbow (stupid weapon design, but you can mitigate this by just camping axe/torch).
Is condi better in general for DPS? Sure.
But both DPS specs are so trivial in the scheme of things because ranger is like mesmer, raids don’t bring you for your mediocre DPS. They bring you for the buffs.
Power druid could use some DPS buffs, but then so could condi benefit from some quality of life stuff like the burning of bonfire just needing to touch the area once to register the full burning duration, removing the flanking requirement off shortbow and buffing the axe autoattack with a couple of bleed stacks.
They’ll still bring you mainly for Grace of the Land/Spirits/Spotter.
(edited by Zenith.7301)