It actually requires no real in-depth math, just a simple observation; the rifle can beat the grenade kit in DPS. So we need to give 1 “condition” for this though and that is that all strikes hit, this is moreso for the grenade kit actually than the rifle since people have to manually aim the grenades and don’t the rifle.
Considering only AA and taking traits related to both specifically grenade base from gw2wiki is .33 with rifle base as .65. Okay, rifle attack speed according to the wiki is .84 in the notes and according to the wiki and for practical purposes I’ll just 1s as the launch time between grenades since that has been debatable that it is .5s since as long as I could remember (not including aiming time). I’m doing this specifically because tooltip on both sort of lies but rifle would drop to .75s (which would instantly make rifle win) so there has to be some give and take.
Okay, so with that as set up there’s no real “math” to this, grenades get +17% since they are explosions for 10% and apply vulnerability for 7%. Rifle gets a 10% aspd boost and 20% faster cooldown. So .84 *.9 is .756. With this set we can do the following:
60/.756 = “attacks per minute”
60/1 = “attacks per minute”
So 79 attacks for the rifle and 60 attacks for the grenades again not including the time to aim or the efficiency of auto-attacking and automatic repetition. Multiply these by the coefficients, grenades will get 1.16 (rounded) for their total and rifle will get its .65.
79 * .65 = 51.35
60 * 1.16 =69.6
The first thing anyone wants to do is say “you just proved yourself wrong!” but this is where the kicker comes in; the autoattack on rifle alone is only 18 points (raised to whatever power and precision, etc.) difference but furthermore the main attacks of the rifle, 3 – 5 have much higher coefficients.
The number of bleeds required to equate one hip fire by coefficient alone is about 11 so without 11 stacks of bleed being applied at one time the condition effects are not sufficient to overcome rifle AA, grenades do not have burning, the highest coefficient on a grenade is 1.5 but the cooldowns are much longer on grenades for the most part.
It gets boring from here on out because the PvP outlook is even worse but the PvE outlook basically doesn’t really support grenades because taking condition duration inherently weakens direct damage and for all rights and purposes without anything else just looking at the coefficient is sufficient to decipher which is worth more. Because DoTs have natural crests and maxes and take time to achieve those crests and maxes it is impossible to compare true DPS until the crest is reached but that takes, if one used Shrapnels ability timer and 100% duration, at least 25s to begin measure which means that in that 25s you have “DPS lag” in which direct damage of the rifle completely outplays the DoT condition which, if one takes Viper’s again forces a hit to the power and thus a lowering of true damage output.
In short a Beserker/Assassin rifle build can’t actually be outdone by a B/A grenadier alone. Grenades on their own do not have high enough coefficients to be “BiS” damage choices, do not apply enough conditions reliably in order to be “BiS” hassle / condition damage, and worse yet take up a slot on your really awesome slot bar which could be used for something else.
And again this is presuming you never miss the grenades and have a perfect aim time of 0s. It isn’t even realistic; if we presumed the average player hit with 90% accuracy against moving targets of slow speed and large hit box (don’t get me started on smaller or quicker) the DPS drop results in 62.64 AA and that isn’t considering a missed or redirected special attack in the rotation.
Going further rifle gives you movement options and grenades do not. The blind and the chill have their places but movement options, ability to immobilize, constant and aim assisted damage regardless of the movement of the enemy, and various skills that can easily compensate or are outright better give more utility as well.
This is depressing me. I used to play conditioneer with grenades. >_< Oh what a fool I was. I have never seen the mathematics or examples that showed that there was a truly tangible difference in correct rotation between using grenades specifically and anything else.
Pistols have quicker cooldown and more consistent condition application, Elixir Gun is it’s own class of weapon and shouldn’t be compared to anything else because that isn’t how it works (but people do it anyway), bomb and wrench completely outclass it but they are close quarters and thus should but bomb specifically in damage and wrench in utility, flamethrower is stupidly synergetic now and needs no explanation, and that’s about it.
My conclusion is simple: Bombs are not the worst but they definitely aren’t the best for dealing damage. They used to hold some real sway back when trait lines gave stats because their line was +300 power / +30? (I forget) critical damage but the original grenade kit didn’t even throw three, it threw two, and … eh, a history lesson for another day, but there was a reason why that line was so critical and where this all came from in the modern era I have no idea.
Basically if it stands still the whole time, you don’t have to aim, and you can just press 1 … use mortar. It hits for .8 base and gets the 10% boost, is an explosion, attacks faster, has a wider hit area (meaning lower aim time w/o trait), applies vulnerability, and actually does attack as quickly as it’s tooltip says. It also does everything but apply bleed that grenades do.
But I think and play a little differently than most others. My mantra and guiding concepts probably differ heavily from yours. I consider “more” than the perfect rotation or the idiot enemy who just takes it like a champ while you pummel it.
(edited by DGraves.3720)