Guild Wars 2

Actually, condition pistols are the 2nd best DPS possible by the engineer after power grenades.

Go with a 10/30/0/30/0 build, popping your elixers often. Stack condition damage > precision > toughness on your gear. It’s a killer build, and probably the easiest to play in the game. Nothing can compare to the blowtorch and the poison dart volley in terms of condition damage.

There is another topic a few down from this discussing pistol condition builds specifically. If you want, I could create the ideal build for you in a calculator.

I know this thread is fairly old, but a lingering question went unanswered. Is it worthwhile to get your condition duration up to the 50% needed to get an extra tick from our 2 second conditions?

I went ahead and did the calculations to determine if using the runes/traits that CptCosmic listed is worthwile:
"
2x krait, 2x afflicted, 2x lyssa runes, napalm specialist, 10 points in explosive tree, 1 sigil of smoldering
"
to obtain +50% duration for both bleeds and burns, thus changing our basic bleed from 2s to 3s, and the burn on crit from 2s to 3s.

These are done using maxed out Condition Damage in PvE, something we should be striving for in such a build.

Highest Base Condition Damage:
+ 315 (armor)
+ 300 (traits)
+ 90 (pistol 1)
+ 90 (pistol 2)
+ 112 (accessories) + 50 (jewels)
+ 90 (amulet) + 25 (jewel)
+ 134 (rings) + 50 (jewels)
TOTAL: 1256

Maxed Condition Damage from Runes (with any +con 5/6 + 1/6):
+ 183 (first rune five times)
+ 28 (second rune once)
TOTAL: 1467

Burn: 328 + (0.25 * 1467) = 694.75 DPS
Lowest Burn duration: 2 seconds
Total damage from burn: 1389.5

Bleed: 42.5 + (0.05 * 1467) = 115.85 DPS
Lowest Bleed duration: 2 seconds
Total damage from bleed: 231.7

Extra Condition Damage from Runes (with afflicted/krait/lyssa):
+ 28 (afflicted)
+ 28 (krait)
TOTAL: 1312

Burn: 328 + (0.25 * 1312) = 656 DPS
Lowest Burn duration (50% increase): 3 seconds
Total damage from burn: 1968

Bleed: 42.5 + (0.05 * 1312) = 108.1 DPS
Lowest Bleed duration (50% increase): 3 seconds
Total damage from bleed: 324.3

So for the burn, we jump from 1390 damage to 1968 damage;
And for the bleed, we jump from 232 damage to 324 damage.

Conclusion: YES, GETTING YOUR +DURATION UP TO AT LEAST 50% IS DEFINITELY WORTHWHILE (at least with maxed out PvE gear). Someone want to go ahead and do it with PvP gear?