Guild Wars 2

When I started doing the math of abilities, I gave up on p/p and swapped to rifle/grenades.

That said, I have toyed with the idea of doing p/p as a power/crit. For one, I like the flow of p/p moves. Its fun to play.
Math says it should be pretty viable.

2 hit reliably on coated bullets p1. giving .324×2 aoe. x3 on triple hits. More then that I am not sure even works, as never could clearly tell if it was happening.
.9s cast thus, .65 scaling aoe direct damage. rifle is .59. grenades… much much more. (but they are kindof op)
The direct bleed is direct hits only of course, piercing, but not aoe on explosion.
This is very important in this choice. The aoe only scales with direct damage, not cond. 2s direct bleed. .05/s scaling. .1 cond scaling.

PDV scales at .37/hit. 5 hits. 2second duration. Lower then war volley for sure. but still decent. 1.85power .1×10s scaling. 1cond.

Statics .37/hit direct. Not amazing. 2-4 stacks of confuse will likely do more in a fairly even power to cond ratio. But is also dependent on your target using skills. if they don’t attack, they dont take any damage.

Blowtorch .915 or .305 and 6s/2s of burn. .25×6 scaling. 1.5scaling full duration burn

PDV is 1.85power scaling every 8s, for 2s. +1cond
P1 at .65 +.1cond every .9s, is 1.3power scaling for 1.8s. (of note, if p1 is hitting 3times per target, pdv is a dps loss.)
Blowtorchs is .915 power +1.5cond every 12s. Burn makes even 3 hits of p1 do less overall, while p1 would technically burst more.

Pistols I feel work better with a power/crit then cond build in fact yes. Conditions gain a damage value innately from level. Free damage. Might also gives +conditions.

So, focus first on crit %, that will give both condition procs and scale your power. (which also comes free from might. ) Then focus on gaining power.

This then leads to the question.
Zerkers or rampagers. power/crit/crit damage. or power/crit/cond damage.
that I do not know.
spvp options are fairly limited. Ideally, I would want like, 500power, 700prec, 200tough, 200 cond, 10% crit damage. something like that.

Runes? a recent topic discussed condition duration. And I was surprised at how effective it was. PDV has nearly a 100% uptime without any. 6s duration on burn is fairly long. I don’t feel trying to achieve 100% duration on burns is a good idea. A target can only have 1 burn on it, from every source. if you have 100% duration burns, no one elses burns will do any damage. Wasted. poison has the same problem technically.
Longer duration confuse is always good. longer immoblize/cripple/blind.
You need 50% to get p1’s direct bleed to 3s. a huge boost in direct damage dps. Increasing the cond coeff per shot from .1 to .15. sounds low taken like that.
But consider over the course of 12s blow torch, the burn is 1.5 cond.
12s of p1 is 13 shots. .1 per shotx13=1.3 that single target bleed is almost doing as much as the burn. Granted 13 shots is only p1. pdv taking 2s would mean 11 shots, blowtorch would take 1 shot. 10 shots.
Pve/wvw food can give +40% duration by itself. HUGE.

So lets see.
lets use grenade 1 spam.

1.434 coeff/s with grenadier. (and short fuse, not +10% damage.) Will also forgo vul.
969 kit weapon.
916power
1962 defense(ill use defense as the name for combined tough/armor)

1.434*969*916/1962=648 damage per throw. (thats all 3 hitting)
200 power
1.434*969*1116/1962=790 damage/throw. 22% damage increase.
+200 toughness
1.434*969*1116/2162=717 d. 10% damage increase. This is200p+200 tough. power increased damage by 10% more then toughness reduced at even levels.
-200power
1.434*969*916/2162=588.7d 9% damage reduction.

so then, this just affirms and empowers the statements of toughness being poor.
Power is about twice as effective as toughness.

coglin.1496:

Casia.4281:

What? its a %.
two attacks for 500 will do the same as 1 for 1000 vs lets say 500 toughness, 1000armor.
Changing the 500/1000damage to power and simple weapon/skill numbers for easy viewing.
.5skill*1000weapon*1000power/1500=333.
.5skill*1000weapon*500power/1500=167 × 2 hits=333.

Toughness negates power in a 1 to 1 ratio.
The reason why toughness is not recommended, is because the equation doesn’t quite end there.
We have crit, we have conditions, we have evasion/avoidance, and we have focus fire.
Not having power, compromises your ability to kill other targets. Especially other high toughness ones. 1000 power vs 1000 toughness/armor
.5skill*1000weapon*1000power/1000=500
1500 power vs 1500 toughness
.5skill*1000weapon*1500power/1500=500

Power builds can avoid damage altogether. what options do toughness have for killing someone?
1000 power vs 1500 toughness.
.5skill*1000weapon*1000power/1500=333
Your mit based defense can be penetrated with conditions. you don’t have the offense to focus fire in team play.

Basically, you just want enough toughness to not get burst down. Evasion, heals, etc will do the rest, while you need the firepower to kill.

Okay, so your telling me you do not know? The second I read “Toughness negates power in a 1 to 1 ratio.” it was very clear you do not know the system. Different attack skills, be it weapons skills or utilities, have varying damage coefficients. Meaning different attacks scale differently with power. That should have been your first clue that toughness as a mitigater does not work on a 1 to 1 ratio with power.

Secondly, the equations you offered as support to your idea are not accurate on a mathematical level either.

Now you ask
“Power builds can avoid damage altogether. what options do toughness have for killing someone?”
Well it is pretty simple really. Any build can dodge. Not just “power builds”. i am unclear why you feel they are unique to “voiding damage altogether”. Gear with toughness on it also has offensive stats such as pow/prec/tough……Toughness doesn’t sacrifice any offensive abilities. Every piece of gear has some form of defensive stat, be that toughness, healing, or vitality. Your post appears to work on some assumption that someone is defenseless as a whole, and that is not reasonable, based on gear stats. The difference is the manner of defense chosen.

For every 1 toughness, incoming damage gets reduced by about .305 (I rounded down)

Example: let’s say you have base 20,000 health, and the enemy can do 1000 damage per second. You die in 20 seconds.

Another example:
Base 20,000 hp and 1000 damage per second incoming.

1388 vitality, 1159 toughness. Or 13,880 additional hp and 353.495 damage mitigated. So 33880 health, you die in 52 seconds.

1388 toughness, 1159 vitality. Or 11,590 additional hp and 423.34 damage mitigated. So 31590 health, you die in 54.78 seconds.

Higher toughness out scales the benefit of vitality the higher it goes as well.

Hrm. I was mistaken. But not for the reason you suggest.
The equation is simply algerbra.

weapon damage and skill coeff have no direct relation to power vs toughness outcome.
coeff*weapon damage*power/toughness+armor=damage.
coeff*weapon is multiplying into power/tough+armor.
.3*1000*A/b=c
300*a+1/b+1=c The +1’s negate each other. its 1/1.

The mistake I was making was forgetting armor effecting the relationship of power vs toughness.
level 80 with no stats 916 power, 916toughness. that is 1:1. adding one above and one below will have a null effect on the equation.
But an engineer/thief will have 1046 armor in exotic medium.
So the equation is skill*weapon*916/1962
+ 10 power is 1% of 916. + 10 toughness is .05% of Armor(as the tough+armor combined stat)

Mell.4873:

coglin.1496:

Casia.4281:

I find it funny, the “conditions!” people are the ones defending toughness.

toughness is very weak. much like +healing.

In order to keep this discussion productive we should try a couple of things (I know it’s the internet, but I have faith in all of us ):

) Provide evidence of our opinions, assuming your experience is indicative of all experiences is a fallacy.

) Make an attempt to be unbiased.

What fact do you have to claim the damage mitigation of toughness is weak? Do you even know the mitigation equation of toughness at various levels of opponents power? i doubt it, yet you still make claims. That is not a very reasonable thought process to do such a thing.

yes i have spreadsheets working it out. but the problem arises when you attack does more damage. you basically mitigate more when you have more toughness.
So more attacks over big attacks.

What? its a %.
two attacks for 500 will do the same as 1 for 1000 vs lets say 500 toughness, 1000armor.
Changing the 500/1000damage to power and simple weapon/skill numbers for easy viewing.
.5skill*1000weapon*1000power/1500=333.
.5skill*1000weapon*500power/1500=167 × 2 hits=333.

Toughness negates power in a 1 to 1 ratio.
The reason why toughness is not recommended, is because the equation doesn’t quite end there.
We have crit, we have conditions, we have evasion/avoidance, and we have focus fire.
Not having power, compromises your ability to kill other targets. Especially other high toughness ones. 1000 power vs 1000 toughness/armor
.5skill*1000weapon*1000power/1000=500
1500 power vs 1500 toughness
.5skill*1000weapon*1500power/1500=500

Power builds can avoid damage altogether. what options do toughness have for killing someone?
1000 power vs 1500 toughness.
.5skill*1000weapon*1000power/1500=333
Your mit based defense can be penetrated with conditions. you don’t have the offense to focus fire in team play.

Basically, you just want enough toughness to not get burst down. Evasion, heals, etc will do the rest, while you need the firepower to kill.

yes those numbers are for how much they gain from power.
Although did mention eg1 condition scaling as well, without any +duration.
I did not mention how much poison scale at. as its very low.
And did not mention how much super elixir scales at… which I have not tested. someone else did that at one point. search might work.

I’ve now mentioned it in a few places/thread.

Elixir gun is really good.
It is probably the second best weapon after grenades.

It is our best long range option. oddly enough.

Rifle is generally though to be. but mistakenly so. it has 1 and only 1 long range move. rifle 1. which 1000 range default, traited to 1200, has .599 scaling and pierces. the rest of rifle is melee range. there is a +10% damage trait.
Elixir gun 1 is 900 range default, traited to 1200 as well. has .380 scaling +4s bleed(.2). there is a +15% damage trait. and also weakens.

Of note, kit is 969 max damage, rifle is 1205 max damage. A huge difference. 24% more damage for rifle due to this.

So rifle 1 will certainly hit harder directly. but eg 1 has that bleed. and weakens.
EG 2 ALSO has 1200 range. 4 bouncing. And scales at .715 So 2 targets for 1.43, or 4 targets for .715. +swiftness/cripple. Any way you look at it. High damage scaling. good buff/debuffs. and 1200 range. This makes egun our best direct target long range option.

EG 3 fumigate is terrible. As I mention in every thread. 3s cast. really really really low damage. applies vul and poison. PDV does better job of poison. And direct damage. Cond removal. super elixir, or 409. again, no one is using fumigate for that. 5stacks of vul. 6s duration on a 10s cd move. just not good enough when other things stack it faster, longer, and without wasting 3s casting such a poor ability.

EG4. very high damage scaling. pure melee. but a nice displacement at least.
EG5. 1200 range. 240 aoe. Can heal from 1440 away.

The key is to not be distracted by condition damage. you get that from might, and other sources. Focus on crit, power, and a bit of toughness. (again not too much. 50% tough, 50% crit damage.
Hrm.. berserk ammy+valk jewel might be good.
798p, 568prec, 284 vit, 15% crit damage +125p, 75 tough, 5% crit damage, 45 healing.

Divinity and celestial too. you really are using every stat.

Rampage ammy, soldiers jewel would work. (more vit then I would like. rather tough. and more cond then needed.)
Valk ammyrampager jewel.

I think deadly mixtures should be moved.
Alch line is already way to heavy. longer duration, 409, hgh, shorter cd, deadly mixtures, automated response, vigor on swiftness, even protection injection. ALL good traits.

Maybe the thought is, if you are going egun and alch, you don’t need 409 with super elixir? dunno.
Deadly as a 10 point would be nice. those traits are less powerful compared to hgh, or 409, which are really hard to justify loosing for deadly. Esp a flame thrower build.
Maybe swapped to 10 point explosive location. Move acidic elixirs to 10point alch, and deadly mix to 10point explosive.

Egun gains too much from firearms Hand. range, 5% damage on bleeding, cdr, extra bleed on hit. crit and cond damage. Don’t know why you would want to encourage not going down that line for it. Its a good fit.

Btw, elixir gun hilariously enough scales with 15% damage potentially more then flamethrower.

How are people suggesting they don’t only use 1? I mean, yes the option to swap both out of combat is quick and easy. And using the op’s suggestion, take both traits, and grats, no change for you.
But most people will be using pistols/elixir, without the flamethrower.

Found grenade recast closer to 1s.
Rifle/pistol/elixir are .8-.9s
23-24 shots in 20s. .87-.83s attack speed
It could be .85s recast on grenades, with that .15s coming from having to manually spam and latency.

Rifle is not long range.

Elixir gun is.
Then pistols is next. Neither of which really come close to other professions long range options. as both are 50% long, 50% melee.

Stunbreakers yeah. basically 1 for each spec. Thats fine. thats pretty much the same as everyone.

Yeah, my typical pistol/elixir gun. lacking knockback to interrupt stomps is the main problem. You can give up elixir B for ram to attain it. or slick shoes.
Pistol blind I would think would be more then enough.

Elixir gun is secret op.

It actually scales really well. and of course tons of utility.
People focus so much on +cond, they overlook how much eg2 and eg 4 scale at.
Even eg1 is good.

+range on pistols brings them from 900-1050. Only 2 skills really gain from it. static and p1. +range on eg brings it from 900 to 1200. on 3 skills.

eg1. .380 scaling. 4s bleed for .2 cond scaling .9s cast same as pistol/rifle. and weaken/phsy proj
eg2. .715 bouncing 4 bounces. Let me say that again. .715. 6.5s cd with fireforged. Large bounce range too. So aoe, and can also double hit the first target.
testing, in zerker gear vs heavy dummy, no might or vul stacked. 1200 crits per hit with elixir F. vs players with might/vul and less armor, we are talking 2-2.5k crits on that.
eg3. fumigate is poor. ill admit that. it needs to be reworked. its damage scaling is atrocious. .385 over 3s, or .128/s Consider I just said F does 6-11 times as much. poison, is weak damage, and if you are doing eg, you probably have pistols as your weapon swap. PDV applies that poison at longer range, longer duration, more direct damage, better in every way. 6stacks of vul. ok, but not at that cost of such low damage. Everyone applies vul. cures conditions on allies… again. eg? kitten 409, and super elixir. you dont need fumigate to cure conditions. Fumigate is a terrible, terrible ability.
Eg4. super underrated. again, because people build +conditions, they don’t see how strong this is. .809/sec. 5s duration. would be nice if it broke stun or cripple/chill. or was leap combo. (actually, does it do any of those undocumented? never tested that..) But regardless, it does evac. and does a good amount of damage. its lava font level of scaling. drop that on seige, or a player that can’t move.
eg5. super elixir. pretty sure everyone knows now good this is. Unlimited target heal. 1200 range +240 radius is HUGE. Light combo for retaliation and cond removal. Ret scales with power.

Really not a fan of flamethrower either. I think you could even take your build, and jsut swap to elixir gun, and be even more effective.

Especially if you try doing this on the fly. See a memser, or necro incoming, swap to elixir gun.

Yeah, the melee nature of engi is something I noticed a while back. and found it very disappointing.

Honestly, play my mesmer and the game changing nature of portal, feedback, null field is shocking as well.
never mind how powerful phantasms vs turrets are.

Know what else? mesmers have multiple cooldown and damage boosting talents for phantasms and illusions. and they stack. on weapon or from utility skill.
Know how are elixir cooldown traits don’t stack, or work with anything but utility slots?

Grenades have a 1.5s air time, at 1500 range.

I find it very amusing pistols have an effectively larger range then rifles. Due to p1 and static shot being fully functional at their max ranges. While rifle only has r1.

Most gadgets as well. Melee.
Slick shoes, rocket boots, ram. all melee. Mine field is melee and throw.
Goggles are 1200. Although 40s cd on 8 stacks of vul is lol.

Fixing turrets to be more in line with phantasm power, will go a long way.

Rifle, and rocket. as well as the knockback.
Even know, that knockback is pretty decent. doesnt scale. flat damage currently.. But 1500 is on light armor. 1207 vs 2600 armor.

C is bad.
swap that for R.

R cleanses periodically on throw. Moderate sized aoe. And can self res you.

It might be true, that some of my “conditions are terrible” comes from an engi/elem bias. 409 and elem water traits let me remove conditions nonstop.
My mesmer has a much harder time removing them. (granted wvw, glamour/phantasm build)

You have 6 cleanses. I would suggest, you are just using them too frequently, if you feel you have down time?
Immobalize generally, get off asap.
Confuse, 2-3+stacks or more. dont worry about 1 stack.
Bleeds. 6 stacks or more. dont worry about 2-3.
Burn. asap is ok. depends on the situation. Burn is high damage. And usually long cd. removing it right away will cut its usefulness down alot. but at the same time, its just damage. Saving that removal for chill, confuse, poison, immobalize, etc might be more important.
Chill. brutal get off asap.
cripple. probably not essential to get off.
poison. not important unless you need to heal. its damage is low. If it will timeout, before you need to heal. let it run out.

conversely, letting 3-4 conds stack up, that are not essential to remove. Means when you have that 1 you do need to remove, you won’t be assured the one you want, is the one that gets cleansed.

I run, H, grenades, B, R, supply drop. and frankly, feel near immune to conditions.
I also really like elixir gun and its cond removal.

Samnang,
no its the worst. Flamethrowers damage over time is pretty terrible.
Its 2.5s per cast. I know it says 2.25, but go time it. there is a delay between each attack. Most have this delay that needs to be added to dps.
Example. pistols says .5s, rifle .75. Both seem to be closer to .8 or .9. I get 24 attacks in 20s.
FT is 1.43 scaling off 969 weapon kit every 2.5s. .572/s. Burn for 1s, every 2.5s.
pistol 1 with coated bullets is definately higher then that. p1 without is close. But then you have blowtorch/pdv/static shot as well.
FT2 scales well. .715 and 1.67 High. But doesn’t really make up for how low FT1 is. especially solo, where 2 doesnt always hit.

others,
How my times do I need to post math? mell has posted some numbers as well.
Sometimes its wrong, and needs to be updated with new observations of behavior.
If you think the math is wrong, prove it.

the topic is, highest dps. Granted that is a loaded term itself.
what is dps?
5min duration vs pve boss that barely moves?
20s duration in a pvp situation where you hit one target for 5-10s, then swap to another?
6-10s duration in pvp situation vs 1 player?
Burst is 0-6s usually. and not the topic.

Mell said, 30s abilities don’t count. I don’t agree. many abilites have longer cd’s like that. and they are very relevant to any of the above metrics. At 5 min, its periodic.
At 20s, you get one use of those big CD moves, even ones up to 60s. Front loading.
Cause really, you can’t take timewarp out of the equation entirely, for example and other things of that nature. It will have a massive effect on dps, and needs to be considered. Asterisk or not in 10-20s duration factoring.

In a pve situation grenades wins by a landslide. stacking vulx6 for 6.3s every throw, without any addition +cond duration. 1s cast time, 18 stacks of vul by yourself. 18% damage increase for everyone attacking the target within 6s of starting. (precise sights, can let you stack 25 vul by yourself with ease within 6s)
Raw damage scaling.
I just said ft is .572/s right? 1 grenade1 is .478. You throw 2. .956. with grenadier you throw 3. 1.434 per second scaling.
3 hits per second. x3 chance to proc sharpshooter bleed.
shrapnel is hilariously overpowered. 4s cd. it scales even better then g1 directly at .524 each, or 1.57 AND 3 12s(15.5s by default with 30 in explosives) bleeds.
Ive talked about how conditions are not very good. but again, shrapnel scales at 2.25 condition damage per throw. lol. 15s duration, 4s recast. 12stacks of bleed without any additional +duration. This means shrapnel scales ridiculously well with might. due to its +cond damage and +power. (as well as orbs, etc.)

20s interval g1 really shines. Again, it scales so much on 1 and 2, that you can blow up one target, swap to another, and blow them up. Grenade carpet bombing. No one else can do this. an elementalist aoe has longer cooldowns attached. Lava fonts are tied to the ground at 5s cds, meteor shower 25s cd. Engi can spam grenades all day long, carpet bombing location after location on the move.

6-10s. Barrage/shrapnel are good. weapon swap to/from rifle for its burst as well. Again, its more the steady damage. Others can burst in this time frame with time stops, meteors, 100 blades, etc.

Application. its a team game. Seriously I am not going to devolve into breaking down how to play as a team. Use common sense. Yes, I am going to die to a thief 1v1 90% of the time. I will win every other fight every time, working with an ally. that is how teamwork works.

You survive portal bombs via scouts, not toughness. And if by magic they do get to you, supply drop, feedback, GRENADES raw dps will win the day.
Toughness will not stop focus fire from 20 players. Reflect, stability, boon stripping, knockdowns will. And to point it out. Neither will conditions, which will be instantly removed in a pack like that.

I find it funny, the “conditions!” people are the ones defending toughness.

toughness is very weak. much like +healing. You need a certain level to stay alive of course. if you trait down a toughness line, do not spend any on gear.
If, wvw, do not invest in any. Spvp. 200 is probably enough.
Survival comes from hard evasion. dodge, stealth, stability, protection, reflect, block, blind, stun, knockback/down. chill. cleansing of CC. All of these things negate taking any damage at all.
Some, when used offensively, allow application of damage without having to worry about getting hit back. when you can someone flatfooted, you need to focus fire and kill them.

Mit wins duels, where there is only 1v1, and sustain counts. in anything larger, focus fire and damage avoidance will win. Reducing our damage by 3% won’t save you. In a teamwork situation offense will win over defense. Again, because there are no stat related damage avoidance. why do I need toughness with supply drop stun, elixir R dodge/stun break. rifle net, rifle kd? This is my wvw, where I don’t run alone, and still. only a burst theif can drop me 1v1, where I dont have enough reliable CC’s for solo. But even in an Spvp situation, why would I be solo? its not a free for all. I might drop B and take net turret for its toolbelt, and turret net, if I were to go pick up spvp.

yes. damage is calculated as: skill coeff*weapon damage*power/armor

armor is generally 2000-2600. tooltip is based off 2600. players can build tanky and get higher for sure. its rare. and some in poor gear might be below.
knowing the formula, its easy to figure out the skill coeff, when the others are all known variables.

Tooltip damage is also based on max damage.

Judging by my numbers +duration was more impactful then +cond damage, in most cases.

*ahem… direct damage is better then either. Even with pistols.
Direct aoe scaling on p1.
.324/hit. could average to .162 if you take an armor vs pistol estimation.
This is aoe. And with coated bullets at max range will double hit. .648 direct, or .324 av versus armor. A triple hit, add another stack.
+5% trait, vul and crit. +65% more damage about(much more if you gear for crit damage). effectively, 1.07, or .5(after armor) scaling.
1 shot every .8s. yes it lies. 24shots in 20s. I’ve tested. obviously base bleed still being applied, as well as sharpshooter.

base bleed is 2s bleed, sharpshooter is 3s. lets use 3s, and 4s.
Direct you will hit twice for 2 3s bleeds. .05×3×2. .3 scaling direct. sharpshooter. 80% crit chance, 30% chance of applying, 24% average per hit aoe. 2 hits. .05×4×2x.24= .096 average.
.396 total direct, .096 of which is aoe for the cond, while the .5 after armor is aoe totally.
P1 scales with power better then cond. (with or without coated bullets) And I was stacking in conds favor with +50% bleed duration, while not giving power +crit damage. Crit chance of 80% does favor power. But again thats the point. of power>cond.

PDV same thing. poison scales terribly. .37×5 direct hits base. Factor armor and crit, etc afterwards.
Static shot and blowtorch get murky. confuse scales well, esp at 2 or 4 stacks per shot. But scales different in pve and spvp, as well is totally dependent on your opponent using skills. If they cleanse it immediately, or stop attackinkittenage.
Blow torches direct is .915 direct base, again crit,etc. vs 1.5 burn over 6s.

This discussion did make me re-evaluate my stance on p/p. Veggie pizza, etc. Cond duration is more effective then I thought.
I do not gear for cond damage, however, level 80 bleeds do 42.5/s by default. Might gives cond. Orbs gave it, but are being removed.
A +100% duration will significantly increase damage per application. P1 and elixir gun1, very notably would gain greatly.

Short duration stacks, +duration is great. But that blowtorch for example. 6s already. Increasing that to 12s, will just be vs dead targets, get cleansed, or not stack with another players burn, as you near 100% uptime. PDV already has 100% uptime with 20% cdr on pistol iirc. or close to it. +duration means nothing for that, save hit and run.

It is any crit. bombs, pistols, rifles, elixir gun, you name it. any target that was crit, in aoe.
But as stated. pistol 1 with coated bullets might hit 10 targets, 3 times each, and get like 25 crits. giving 1-2 bleeds per target to ten targets due to sharpshooter and it NOT having a cooldown. incendiary powder will only be applied to 1 of those 10 targets, once.

Just did some testing.
3.2 seconds was the shortest I could get between two burns. Doubling hitting with p1 and coated bullets Crit was not 100% though. this does not mean its 3. But does mean, its not longer then 3.

I’ve heard 2, and 3. Have not tested myself yet to find the number.
However, I can confirm it does exist. With p1 coated bullets, and with grenades, at no point did it every burn more then 1 target. While bleeds were stacking up like crazy.

bombs are point blank. Grenades thrown at point blank never miss. They explode on contact, and don’t have a chance to spread. They only spread if you throw them at great range, downwards. you should be landing them 100% 0-1000 range every time. 1500, yes they might spread on you. 1500 uphill, 100% of the time, as they wont spread until they arc down.

2-3k/s bleed would take a VERY large amount of +condition damage, and a lot of stacking.
25 stacks of 2400 cond damage. who can stack 25 stacks by themselves?
even that shrapnel/sharpshooter only does about 15.

Mell.4873:

Casia.4281:

Grenades are the highest dps yes.
But condition damage second? lol. not even close.

The reason i say this is the caste times are about double what they say for most attacks. But condition stacks are always a second. It is possible to get about 2-3k damage a second with bleed. Nothing can compare to this.

I find most attacks are exactly what they say. I get 25 shots on rifle in 20s.

Granted, double checking grenades.
1.5s air time. 1s recast. Not .5s.
Still 1.43/s on grenade 1. +g2, and barrage.

Vul stacking, +10% damage if you take that, bleed stacking itself via shrapnel, and sharpshooter.

yeah, not a fan of U. The debuff and short duration kills it. It is not as good as other professions quickness. and its going to come in the place of another ability. one that WILL work when you need it to.
B and R are my go-tos in pve and wvw. In spvp, I could see dropping B for S.

B in general, is just so good. its stable. gives the same buffs all the time. short CD.
With hgh. 2 stacks of might, fury, swiftness, and retaliation. So good. The throw, is pretty pointless of course, save hgh and 409.
75% life Elixir B+Elixir B itself giving a ton of duration on fury,ret. 4 stacks of might. Again awesome.
But its just raw stats. S of course has a special effect. Not having it, probably means you have no option to ensure a stomp doesn’t get interrupted. in pve, and wvw, not a big deal. in Spvp, a big deal.

R’s self res and periodic cleansing. amazing. Its stun break, and extra dodge rolls. as well. Dont pvp without it.

I would not recommend flamethrower. Its mathematically suppar. Pistols do better damage, apply burns better. Blinds better. As well as poison/confuse, and immobilize. don’t waste a slot. The KB is all ft has over pistols. Which, can be gained elsewhere. Anything ft can do, bombs/pistols does better. (or p/s if its the reflect you want)

but uh yeah.

Try bombs or elixir gun.
Bomb is like melee grenades with knockbacks and better combo fields. Less raw damage, doesn’t stack vul as fast, and melee.. but still.

Elixir gun has a ton of support options. make sure to take kit refinement. don’t use fumigate.

Grenades are not bad in spvp.
You can miss 2/3 of the time, and STILL do more damage then pretty much any other weapon.
They are bad, if you are bad, and if you didn’t put any effort into making a good team comp.
Even then, drop out of grenades to set them up via rifle or pistol CC. And/or use net turret CC, or slick shoes.

Spvp is not a duel. if you go into it expecting to 1v1, then yeah, you are going to have a hard time with grenades.
If you go into it with a partner or two that will build to your strengths and weaknesses..
Mesmer(feedback, nullfield, timewarp,knockdowns) + guardian (stability, wall, knockdowns)+grenades(raw damage)… Slaughter everyone.

Centaur runes give +bleed duration.
You can also get +duration via food.
Or swap the bleed chance sigils for +duration sigils.

He thought you meant 2pc x2. Or 2 major+2 superiour.

Situations where you are hitting 3 times or more, will increase the value of the aoe hit on sharpshooter. conversely, the lower you crit rate, the less effective it is as well.

The higher your base condition damage, the more valuable an extra tick is. If you are pushing 2k+, then that 3s duration becomes even more valuable.
2s is 10% per shot on pistol 1 base bleed. 3s is 15% per shot on pistol 1 base bleed.

Bleeds scale poorly.
.05 per stack/s. All that effort to add .05 of your condition damage is a poor choice.

Basically forget the bleed duration on explosive shot. its single target(or piercing) and its short duration makes it scale with +duration poorly, as you have noted)

1000 cond damage without runes?
+253=1253 at 2s, 3s, 5s. 125 damage, 188damage(94ave), 313damage.(?)
+111=1111 at 2s,4s,7s. 111, 222(111ave),389(?)
+85=1085 at 3s, 4s,7s. 163,217(108ave),380(?)

Now, you need to consider how frequent each will go.
Direct hit will land every shot. if you have coated bullets, in a line.
Sharpshooters 30% chance on crit. You should be building crit and have a good 60-80%+
18-24% chance on hit aoe for sharpshooter. With coated bullets, this has a chance of applying every hit. so x2 pretty regularly due to exploding on max range for a double hit.
Lets say 50% chance of applying on average. take the second number and cut it in half for average. 94,111,108
Sigil of earth. I don’t know what the idc on this is. But that it has one, means its not aoe.

Discluding sigil.
option 1 is 125 direct, 94 average aoe for 219 ave direct.
Option 2 is 111 direct, 111 average aoe, for 222 average direct. (and more aoe)
Option 3 is 163 direct, 108 average aoe, for 271 average direct, (and barely less aoe)
hrm.. option 3 does seem best. only loosing 3 aoe damage?
I guess my inital thought was wrong. Or my math…

Yes, stacking durations keep their decimals. a 2.5s poison applied twice will add up to 5s poison.

Grenades are the highest dps yes.
But condition damage second? lol. not even close.

lol… sigh…

Anyway. A real question would be zerkers or rampagers?
power/crit/crit damage or power/crit/condition damage.
that I have not done the math on. and rampagers might win for pistol and ft.

coglin.1496:

I see a lot of comments made about condition damage that are not entirely accurate. Several post mentioning condition damage appear to fail to include the base direct damage of the attack as well. just throwing that out there.

that point is the entire basis of, don’t build for condition damage.
even most skills that are seemingly condition based, scale better with power/crit.
pistol really stands out for this.

might gives power and cond damage.
Base cond also scales with level. DD doesn’t.
Between level and might, condition damage abilities will deal respectable cond damage.

haha. we obviously shifted to a larger topic. I was going to comment and try to bring it back to flamethrower which is burn, bleed(with sharpershooter), and blind.
but didn’t want to sound like I was changing the topic due to loosing a point. because the point is solid.

Yes, there are a few isolated cases. Grenades. poison grenade obviously scales with cond damage better, as it doesnt deal any direct damage. but grenades as a whole..
Elixir gun 1. 5s bleed, vs .380 powerscaling per .75s. 5s bleed is about perfect duration. 5s is short enough to almost always get full duration in, and not be cleansed, or be wasted on a dead target. the default power scaling is pretty low.
But again, elixir gun2, and 4 scale VERY well with power. (eg 3 is terrible.) Fails at cond removal compared to super elixir, and 409. fails at poison compared to PDV vul comes from many sources. you really dont need to waste your time on such a weak channeled move for it.
Obviously, napalm and ammo are burn, and only burn. But ft1 and ft2 are clearly 90% of your damage, and almost entirely power based.

Retaliation, and lightning strike via static discharge trait are purely power based, btw.

Static shot scales with direct damage as well as confusion. .37 direct. vs .15 in pve/wvw, .075 in spvp.
Concussive bomb does as well. (although in this circumstant. 5 stacks of confuse vs .475 confus wins hands down.) but in hat case, the rest of bomb clearly scales with power very well.
poison anti heal is not effected by condition damage. PDV with power or cond damage will have the same anti-heal effect.
Weakness also not effected by cond damage.

no one is arguing skill use.
Weakness, poison anti-heal, blind, etc all have nothing to do with power/crit vs cond damage.

TA and HotW also has a tough/prec/cond damage option.

In what way does 2k damage over 4s add utility over 3k instant?
condition damage is mathematically inferior to direct. end of story. saying something is viable, when its provably worse in every situation to the alternative is silly. This is not even a playstyle question. you can use pistols, which clearly deal lots of condition damage. but STILL scale better with direct in terms of killing power, and raw damage.

Blinds, knockdowns, immobalize, chill, daze, cripple, etc all work 100% effectively with 0 condition damage.

condition damage isn’t support. condition damage is damage.

Condition damage should be viewed as additional damage, applied to skills. under only no circumstances should it be considered a primary focus of damage. (only mesmers with massive confus stacking should even consider it) Pistols can come close with static shot bouncing, and confus bombs.

Frankly, while 8v8 support vs cannon is silly, because why would you only have 1?
grenade+mesmer+guardian on one team. grenades kill, mesmer reflets, guardiand knockdown. But lets say cannon vs support. Again. 8 grenades focus fire and deal 80k damage aoe with grenade barrage x8 in .5s. conditions focus fire and stack 30seconds of 800 damage/s burn. ouch. 80k vs 800. formula 409.

The math has been presented to you. you can keep dancing around it, and arguing what you consider viable. but anecdotal evidence, based on who you did or didnt play against means nothing. I’m glad you won some matches, but I don’t know who against, and if they understood the math behind any skills or scaling themselves.
I mostly wvw, but really, you think you will beat me in Spvp with a power build, and formula 409? 5 ways to remove conditions, and 1 that removes and pulses removal.

Show me some math. I would love to see how I am wrong here. I used to defend p/p, until I broke it down. I can’t defend condition damage. They don’t scale. and they are too easy to remove for most professions.

Faction, yes.
the orr gear comes in 3 options.
One is tough/prec/cond damage. Seemingly amazing for pistols/flamet/elixir. Although, as I’ve now been over. cond damage is very weak.
http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-templegod-karma-armor-sets/

I put together a set when I was doing p/p and still thought conditions were good.

leftharted.7102:

Geebus their are some die hards here!! Anyone saying power or condition is better than one or the other is WRONG.

Thats right, You, you There, you’re WRONG!!

Because!!! its all situational. OP didnt specify what focus he meant for… PvE solo?? PvE Group? sPvP? WvW??? so, to answer the OPs question, i say, BOTH!!! try Both, Both can be viable in any given situation, if you seek out and abuse those situations =)

I have done a Very high condition damage / toughness build with flamethrower is sPvP and some WvW and kicked Butt. The key to doing well, is sticking with your strong suite, depending on your build. its up to YOU to decide and specialize for that suite.

Both are viable, and both builds have different strengths. sheer Damage output means NOTHING if you such at landing/aiming it.

the exact same mechanics apply for applying direct and condition damage.

Name one situation where dealing 2k damage is better then dealing 3k?
Even if we pretend for a moment, that 2k can’t be cleansed reducing it even further to 500 damage.
If you missed the direct hit, you missed the application of the condition as well.

There is only 1 condition that even comes close to direct damage, and that is confusion. with multiple stacks, in WvW.
5-6s stacks of confuse in WvW, scaling at .15 will actually deal competitive damage to direct damage scaling. .75-.9/attack. And also, scales in cast time due to matching attack rate. a .5s grenade attack for example will hit them really hard at 2 attacks/s.
Confuse in spvp, is less impressive, scaling at 50% of its normal rate. .075 5 stacks being .375/attack.
Obviously, still better then the others.

A burn at .25/s is pretty terrible.
Bleeds as well. at .05/s

How exactly does that compare to direct damage? skill coeff*weapon*power/armor.
kits are 969, pistol 1025, rifle 1205
Armor is 2000-2600ish. This means we can on average take the skill coeff and cut it in have to get an average. Or do the math if you want to be specific on which weapon vs what level armor. rifle vs light armor will obviously deal way more. while a kit vs heavy will scale less.

The flamethrower is terrible as I mentioned. one of the worst scaling(if not the) weapons in the game.
1.43 power scaling over 2.25s .633/s armor average reducing that to .317.
So, the worst scaling weapon in the game, after armor, still scales better then burns, bleeds up to 6 stacks, and confuse 2 stacks.
And that was with no crit. no +15% damage trait, no vul. Each of those, and any other +damage trait such as 5% damage to bleeding targets, all increase dd scaling.
A 50% crit rate, with no +crit damage, increases that power coeff average by 25%. 15% ft trait, another 15% multiplicative. vul, another 1-15% multiplicative.

yeah, might and boon duration runes and food are pretty fantastic for pve.
For wvw, centaur runes are so good. And boon duration food.

I do have to point out, here as well…
FT needs work. its damage is pretty much mathematically subpar.

Also bleed itself is very low damage. Its additional damage, but not something that should be focused on.

I mentioned in another post I wanted to consider an accelerate packed build.
after playing a mesmer alt, and playing with temporal curtain, I was feeling pretty down on my engi. (feedback/null field, etc as well)

Grenades are great for just raw damage. but the disruption my mesmer can unleash is unparalleled. and wins fights more then just raw damage.

Bombs, accel turrets, wrench. shield offhand, rifle.

One of my main concerns is the melee nature of most of engis skills. So, offhand shield, as largely written off due to this. As well as being locked in place when using.

Bombs do offer alot of combos, good damage, etc. A good option to make use of.

Accel packed turrets.
Turrets are a hit/miss.
They do not scale with stats, for better or worse. it means you can build purely vit/tough and they deal as much as you would in zerker gear.
Two main traits needed are deployable and accel packed of course. They all have a 900 range deploy. 5 targets on explosion. deals 1207 exactly to 2600 armor. no crits. no variance. 1500ish to light armor. (I did not check to see if rifled barreled 15% effect accel. or explosive powders +10%)
Rifle and heal turrets have a 20s cd, making them both ideal for making use of the aoe knockback at range. Other, better turrets also have longer cooldowns. Net is a very good one as well. 30s CD, and also very good toolbelt skill, as well as basic cast. 3s immobalize on toolbelt. and stun/damage/immobilize on overcharge of net turret. Rocket is best damage, but large CD. thumper has nice kb, but long cd as well. flame would work well as well. 40s cd, overcharges for smoke field, and has a decent aoe burst/burn toolbelt skill.
3rd slot then is either a 3rd turret, or wrench. smokefieldprojectile is blind. And blast stealth. Accel packed is a blast combo. heal toolbelt is also a water field. which is an aoe HEAL with a blast combo, and regen on projectile.
Wrench.
primary melee, which is meh. however, magnet. single target only. but still, good troll, and good for assassination. A pull, into a prybar hit+confuse, and a net shot. Deadly.
Bombs in the place of wrench might work too. More combo fields, more blasts you can do off of them as well. and better damage scaling.

Main weapon. pistol or rifle.
Not sure really. Pistol would offer blind/confuse with static shot. Adding to the massive CC, trolling. Glue shot as well, another ranged aoe cripple/immobalize.
Rifle on the other hand
Another aoe melee knockback.

supply drop ranged aoe stun. (and blast)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcUQJAqalIqyUnrSyF17IxIFMW0heg/7v4PKeLdB;TwAgyyuEcJ5S1liLKYM+I8xOjDG5MA

Largely this is more about just being massively disruptive. And less about actually dealing damage yourself. Maybe even elixir gun for last slot, and its healing. swap kit refinement for wrench trait. now you have a light fieldx2, and massive healing.

Something I would like to look into.

double checked. and crit damage stat is additive.

So base crits are +50% damage. +zerk ammy gives +20% crit damage.
this gives you +70% damage crits. 30 in tools would give +100%.
It only shows the value over 50% in char sheet however.
A 700 hit, would deal 1400 crit damage with +50% crit damage listed.

Grenades are by far the highest consistent damage weapon in the game. to the point, its not really even fair to argue balance vs them. Their damage is too high. This is largely the reason for “if you aren’t using grenades, you are doing it wrong” posts. some others are under powered, some are in a fairly good place, with minor tweaking. but grenades completely trivialize everything else.
(not necessarily the most burst. I had a 5k mug, 6k CnD, 10k backstab pretty much instantly on me last week for example from a thief using a burst build)

That 3k power build I mentioned, which is not hard to hit with zerker gear, food, might stacks, will be dealing 6-8k per second with grenade 1 alone. You think that 3k/s from a war/thief is bad? its not aoe, and its not ranged. Or even a 20k hundred blades. 20k over 3seconds, rooted in melee. I do that much damage with grenades. all the time, from range.

Grenade 1 has a .478 power scaling on a .5s cast.
With grenadier, effectively 1.46 every .5s, and 2.92s. Compare that to anything else.
And this is with being weakened by kit weapon damage.
Burns scale at .25s of cond damage, bleeds at .05. Grenade 1 scales at 2.92 of power/s., then crit and crit damage on top of that, as well as buffs, such as explosions do 10 more damage. Do you see the problem?

zerker gear? Depends what target you face as well. tooltip is factored vs 2600 armor. most cloth are around 2000, medium 2200, heavy 2400. unless they specifically gear or trait for toughness.

Yeah, guild buffs, food, and 150 stat orbs can make a HUGE difference.
I discusses this in guild on the importance of never letting an opposing server get all 3 orbs.
its nearly a 20% damage shift.
150 toughness is like 6.5% damage reduction.
While 150 power/crit is like 13% damage increase.
So if I have 3 orbs, You deal 6.5% less damage to me, and I deal 13% more damage to you. ouch.
Food can then be another +60 power, guild buffs another 40 power,

Health scaling is huge too.
orbs give 150. you can guild buff for 40 vit. that is 1900 hp alone.
Then % buffs.
Orbs are +15%, guild +10% and realm bonus is like 2-10%. Pretty sure they are independant as well iirc.
Meaning. if you have 19000 hp normally. zone into wvw, and get guild buff.
20900. *1.35=28215
Orbs double dip by giving Vit, and then a % bonus on top of that. And then there are 3 % based hp sources of hp in WvW.

Gearing for vit in wvw is then probably a bad idea. While any vit you gear, will get % increased, its more effective to gear for toughness which will then scale with that high vit value.

Also, reason why conditions are bad in wvw #103034. Everyones vit is skyrocketed innately.

Grenade barrage.
.357 power scaling per. 6 hits. (I don’t think it gains from grenadier a 7th.)
It uses 969 weapon damage no matter what, however does gain the stats from rifle/pistols if you have them out, and not grenade kit. so, you could be getting +179 power, 128 prec, and 9% crit damage from that.
3000 power vs 2200 armor target. (I should write down my stats in full zerkers with 9-15 stacks of might, orb/guild buffs, food/consumables..)
472 av per hit. fury and zerkers should give a good 80% crit chance.
661 av with base +50% damage crits. 3967 barrage. And that is base crit. I.. actually need to do the math on how +crit damage works. is it additive? Is +9% on zerker rifle, +59%, or multiplicative, +54.9% damage.
Ruby orbs are 5% per, tools is 10-20%, rifle 9%, zerker gear is 5% per. Its a large buff as well obviously.

Twiz, every engi weapon is aoe pretty much.
Rifle pierces innately. so its 1 attack will hit 2-3 in the same way flamethrower’s 1 will. Slightly smaller cone obviously. Rifles 3 is aoe, and as large of a burst as blast, but 1000% more reliable. its 4 is aoe knockdown, its 5 is aoe burst.
Pistol is almost 100% aoe as well.

Both deal more aoe damage then flamethrower. Bomb and grenades also clearly deal more aoe damage.

FT 1 needs to deal about 50%-75% more damage. Seriously, its WAY behind the curve for damage output.
ft5 needs to drop a smoke field, and probably deal damage.
Toolbelt skill needs 30s cd tops. maybe less.
Compare grenade barrage, big ol’ bomb, and incendiary ammo. its not even close.

yeah, and that also is largely my point. The mechanics are fine.
Traits like rifled barrels, and coated bullets only effected 1 or two skills is not.

Really not a fan of the delay or the pure melee nature.

but yest, bombs are viable in both spvp and wvw.
Very much in spvp due to point hold/capture.

Even in wvw though. Several combo field options, as well as blast finisher.

Bombs scale well for what they are. (not as OP as grenades) but quite appropriate.

bomb1: 1.19 power scaling. .5s cast.
b2: .19 power scaling (terrible) but fire field and burn.
b3: .476 power scaling. 5 stacks of confuse. (that is alot)
b4: smoke field. aoe invis on blast. blind on projectile swap. duration could be longer. :/ 5-6s smoke field would be better considering the lack of damage.
b5: glue bomb. melee version of glue shot. basically not as good as glue shot. only 5s shorter cd. same size, same duration. melee.. could use a small buff considering..
big ol bomb: 1.6 power scaling. knockback, blast. 3-4s delay.

All in all. Less raw damage then grenades(b1 is more damage then grenades without grenadier). more utility though, and 2 combo fields. Both of which are arguable better then poison field.

As far as I know, they have never commented on it.

409 and H.G.H both effect thrown elixirs. Neither effects elixir gun though.

Was probably a design change at some point and the tags were never changed.
Frankly, playing other classes, it should work. Alot of cross trait effectiveness they have, is missing here. (save the cooldown)

+300% max zoom is the best reward EVER.

yes thats the problem. The net has a travel time. And in the time it takes to travel past a 500 range, the target will always have run out of max range, or moved out of the way, or dodged, etc. It only works reliably on targets within 500. Or stationary of course.
Since glue shot is ground target, you can lead your target, and thus actually land it at max range reliably. You could argue net shot is better at close range to do instant auto target fire.

And yeah, I have considered knockback turrets for wvw, just for the ranged kb. coupled with net turret, and net on belt, and rifle kb, net. Have not actually playtested that concept yet though, if someone else wants to.

Breaking down the math. flamethrower is really really bad.

Flamethrower 1.
1.43 power scaling over 2.25s duration. 1s burning applied at the end of the 2.25s duration.

Pistol 1 is .325 power scaling every .5s.
Rifle 1 is .599 power every .75s.
Grenade 1 is .478×2 every .5s (.478×3 with grenadier)
Elixir gun 1 is .380 every .75s.

So, to reduce that into comparable values, .477 every .75s for flamethrower.
That is less then pistols, and rifles 1 in raw dps. Even if I forget pistols aoe, and bleed, and rifles range and pierce.

And that is not considering weapon damage. Flamethrower is 969 weapon damage.
A pistol is 1025, a rifle is 1205.
Weapon damage alone will account for 15-25% more damage from pistol or rifle auto attack alone. As damage is: skill coeff*weapondamage*power/armor

And that is just auto-attack. Auto attack is NOT the highest damage for pistol, rifle, grenades, etc. While flamethrower only has 1 other damage move. (Napalm is more about the fire field.) flame blast is buggy. Good damage when it lands granted.
the 10 hits over 2.25s is 10 chances to stack the bleed on crit. But note, pistols hit 4 times in 2s as well, and up to 8 times with coated bullets hitting twice. Even rifle is 3 times.

+15% damage trait is in alch. A line already HEAVY with great traits. are you going to give up h.g.h for it, or 409? And that 15% trait doesnt make it catch up to the others.

Burning and utility.
1s burning on a move that takes 2.25s to cast. This means flame1 can’t give perma burning, or stack duration. So, you don’t leave targets burning, after you hit them. Even pistol does this..
incind ammo. 60s cooldown, for 3 stacks of 3s burning. Kindof pathetic compared to grenade barrage. 30s cd on that, and 2-6k aoe damage.
Napalm. Fire field. A bit weird since flamethrower itself can’t combo it. But swapping is easy enough. A 24s cd on what is essentially just a fire field, and a small one at that, is poor. this needs to do more really. be a circle, not a line. shorter CD. larger aoe. Or longer burn.
Incendiary powder trait. Is single target due to cooldown. This will help you keep burns up 100% in 1v1 etc, for sure. but is very ineffective aoe.

Air blast. actually, not sure if this is a block or reflect on projectiles. either way not bad. But timing is tough. A wall would be better, but the short cd is ok. Pulling IN however is what the skill set needs. I don’t know why that was removed from the set.

smoke vent. Blind is good. but this is inferiour to static shot in the pistol line. It of course used to be a pull. Melee only, giving no ranged defense. longish CD, and no secondary effect. Look at a theives black powder. Why is this not a smoke field?
Backdraft WAS amazing. Smoke vent needs work. Its half a skill atm.

so, I really can’t justify flamethrower atm. Pistols apply blind and burns better, while dealing more melee aoe damage.
Flame does have a knockdown, and mobile proj block. which is good. that is the best part for sure.