Guild Wars 2

Well you are partially right. But where you are wrong is about ‘’is the engineer alone and buffs’‘. The only place where these numbers are worth something is in raid, maybe in fractal. Outside of that, the general population of the game doesn’t really give a crap. We used to look at solo numbers because solo dungeon run were a thing, but not anymore. Calculating and testing build, rotation, etc is a long and exhausting so we only talk about the situation where it matter and for now it’s full buffed group.

This is alright, not a problem, but if you are doing this you have to define the variables (group) in order for it to work. Obviously 9 necromancers + 1 engineer is going to have different results. Since you are doing the math for a dedicated instance in a dedicated scenario you are only producing results based on that scenario. As for “no one cares” … That isn’t accurate. Perhaps “no one that matters to me” but you find a lot of average joes reading a lot of guides and wanting to do whatever content to the best of their ability.

I understand you don’t have a responsibility to them but simply posing “This is the best” when it is actually “This is the best under these circumstances” is a totally different message.

As for it being long and exhausting … Maybe it’s just how I do it with others… Nevermind.

Now if you talk about vaccum numbers as mathematical numbers that doesn’t take into account the imperfect rotation, dodge and down time of a fight then you are right. But there is Jaxnx to help you with that. Anyway, you comparing the auto-attack of grenade and rifle (I almost never use auto-attack on my condi rotation) is as useless as compare each skill in a vaccum like you said.

But true enough someone playing solo could do more dps with rifle than nades just by the fact that nade can be a little hard to hit all the time when you don’t concentrate.

But this is my point. Saying a weapon was “required” at one time for max anything just isn’t true when taken out of the vacuum depending on what you were doing and where you were doing it. I guess you could say that I know many players who got sucked into “this is the best, it does this much” when in reality it only did that much under certain conditions and otherwise was just crap.

But I like pugs. Keeps you guessing.

Xyonon.3987:

Not realistic? These numbers are made to be realistic – they are based on the raid environment. Every power engineer has 100% crit chance, the engineer is not alone, obviously, he has 9 allies and the buffs come from them. Those are not “vacuum numbers” as you describe them.

Actually that is a vacuum. It’s a “perfect team” scenario. This is/was the problem with many numbers in the past regarding obscenely high “DPS” claims where people would not test the characters and their potential by themselves. Instead they would put them in scenario X against enemy Y with party Z. This isn’t to say it’s bad to consider the situation that way but what happened historically is people would get kicked out of groups for not being build A or class B or role C specifically because these only work when it is in the vacuum.

To be blunt, if I rolled dice and randomly chose my party members would I necessarily get the same output? Am I guaranteed this particular set-up? And if I do not get it what happens to my Engineer? Is he bringing enough of his own utility or are we doomed because we were dependent on some critical element?

Again, it isn’t bad to create optimal teams and such, but the effectiveness of a build can only be assessed outside of a vacuum; if it is within a specific scenario it may be next to worthless for content that isn’t that specific scenario. I’ve seen that too with quite a number of claimed to be amazing builds. But that was a long time ago…

The problem with posting these numbers is two fold:

1. They presume isolated instances. The “Lost Time” problem is basically the idea that the optimal rotation for different strategies involving different skills shifts because of the cooldown on those skills. Comparing a skill with 8s cooldown to one with 5s becomes complex because people isolate the attack to produce what I call “PWM” or “Perfect World Mathematics” which involves basically a stasis in which the moves are the only things that trigger in that time.

That’s what you get if you measure the dps of skills with CD yes. But I did not do this. I’m well aware about this and I used the term “damage per invested second cast time” to exactly annihilate this “Lost Time” as you call it. It doesn’t matter when you use the skill, if it has been off cd for a few sec or if you perfectly throw it on 0, the priority to use that skill / the damage per invested second cast time stays the same.

This explanation just got too long on my part as to why that is a bad method. In essence you shouldn’t average and project time compressed values especially when not considering equivalency in frequency. The error arises during the space between; BiS moves may for instance enhance the outcome of the next iteration.

Let’s say you lay a fire field and grant yourself might just before the next iteration of the item you are measuring. This is a direct shift of that attack which drastically changes the outcome when compared to another attack that cannot blast finish might. The first iteration is not equivalent to the second which may not be equivalent to the third, etc. so the compressed measurement and projection is simply inaccurate.

DGraves.3720:

2. It’s algebraically wrong. First question is whether or not we can terminate variables? We can terminate might for instance because 875 is added to both damage equations netting an effect of 0. There is absolutely no point to greater than half of those numbers. Critical damage (ferocity) has no value because it’s net zero as it can be applied equally and is. Critical chance is generally averaged in PWM so it’s worthless too because it’s a base factor whether 100 or 50 or 20%. The values are not simplified which inflate them and make them very hard to read for those who aren’t versed enough to know to terminate them to find the real values (despite having found the coefficients this way).

Might is 750 power and condition damage since about 1-2 years, but that aside:
Condition damage and power damage do not scale the same. Power damage does increase by the same % as the power of the engineer increases. This is not the case with condition damage due base damage values normal attacks do not have. For example a power skill deals 0 damage with 0 power, a condi skill still has a base damage with 0 condition damage. So it makes a difference if you have might or not, also there are different bonuses like empower allies wich only grants power. So you want to have full buffed realistic values to get correct results.

Since there is a natural base there is a net effect of zero. The fact that there is a natural base is not equivalent to the bases being equal themselves. For instance if you naturally have 10 HP and 5 MP does that mean that adding 50 to each changes things drastically? No. The percentage value does shift kitten experiences the greater shift despite being lower than 60 but that is captured in this game as the coefficient.

You could consider “natural base” in two ways, 1. Completely decked out but without temporary effects or 2. Real base stats. Either works. However when using temporary effects just like the problem above the shift in iteration whether it be from expiration or compounding of the boon causes drastic effects over the time where it is absent whether that be in the beginning working up to the captured moment or towards the end or due to an unexpected death of a party member, etc.

You want to terminate as many erroneous variables as possible. For instance if your FT Juggernaught you would claim the might as it is part of the build but only after “full stacks” and start from there, you would not start the moment you acquired the might, because that means strikes 1 and 2 will be less than 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 etkittenil full stacks; this is rarely if ever accounted for in averaging or stages of application.

This gets too long to go further. As for the might thing being 750, thanks for the update; I should read the tooltips more often.

About crits – every single power profession aims for 100% crit chance and therefore has a 100% chance to apply the full ferocity aka crit damage in raids (! in fotm there might be enemeis with higher levels than 80 wich messes up everything, yet not in raids !). I agree that the dps may be different each time if you don’t have 100% crit chance (if you use a not optimized build), but even then we calculate the average in the long term, after using 1000000 times a skill. Those are values, you can’t disagree with.

Actually the entire reason why I disagree with those values is because you calculate them over huge amounts of iterations! Those are values you can disagree with. As stated before iteration 1 and 2 change when conditions change right? Since conditions are not always universally the same the expression and projection of averages under certain conditions will always be inaccurate. To be frank let’s say that a skill does 25 more damage with every 5 stacks of might. So at 25 it does 125 more.

If it takes 25s for this character to get 25 stacks when we project out those iterations 24 don’t actually fall in line. So you say “whatever 25 is nothing”, but often it’s obviously much higher than 25 but 25 × 1,000,000 is … well, 25,000,000. But at least 24s, including the first second, is missing. That could, and often is, a downshift of several million in just this simplified version alone.

Don’t even get me started on fury downtime (though thanks to the Rev. I can stop calculating for that <3) or being out of range or missing a proc or someone dying anything like that. This is why DPS tends to overstate the real numbers; the averages are taken over X iterations with full variables not without full variables. If you took off the might you wouldn’t have the shift and could likely gauge accurately what is going on.

Algebra: Remove Dependencies. Terminate Unnecessary Variables. Find X.

DGraves.3720:

The only things to take into consideration are A ) attack rate, B ) coefficient base ( which you can actually take and add with condition effects for a unified base since they are applied at the same time and are easily solvable), and trait values.

As mentioned above – no – you need full buffed values to get the correct upscaling of the power and the condi part of each skill, since they don’t scale the same.

No, because you tend to overstate and thus over project perfect scenarios. Doing 1,001 perfect runs and 101 ugly imperfect ones due to human error might produce totally different results if you still account for the 101 as perfect runs ( over projection ) in your calculations. Everyone would think that stupid. But then you do it with base level iterations.

If you have a 6s bleed or a 12s bleed or a 20 years bleed, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is A) the invested cast time and that the target stays alive for the duration. It doesn’t matter if a skill is instant or not. You mustn’t calculate the damage per second of a skill, it only matters how much damage you get by investing a cast time.

Actually the main problem is that DPS presumes A ) the target is alive (Invincible Target for Averaging) and B ) crest values. It does matter. A lot. If you take crested values and use that as your capture for averaging you will get drastically different results than if you do not. When stacking intensity when you frame your iterations is absolutely imperative; if a build has a bleed cap of say 12 at 100 each projected over a minute that is 72,000. If you take the same build and account for each bleed as a step it is 100 + 200 + 300 + 400 + 500 + 600 + 700 + 800 + 900 + 1000 +1100 + 1200 × 48 which is 64,200. So yeah, it matters, a lot. It’s a difference of 7,800.

The dps isn’t determed by the highest tic you can do, nor by the skills you may be able to stack together and see them tic as high and impressive as possible. It’s about to use those with the highest ratio of damage per invested bla bla as often as possible. Yet I do not see your point in breaking down my numbers with arguments like movement and skill, as it was purely to show that the rifle clearly is obsolete compared to the nade, especially auto attack wise.

The DPS is determined by the highest tic you do with the highest ratio of damage invested per bla bla bla. The DPS of a direct damage move without might wouldn’t change if that were not true. But it does change. Because that isn’t true. The problem with not considering real-time variables and calculating DPS off of perfect iterations is that they are perfect (read as: not exactly the human standard) iterations elongated out over thousands of perfect iterations giving falsely high values.

DPS requires constancy. Adding in elements that are guaranteed to not be constant is equivalent to just throwing yourself off on purpose and calling it a day. I like perfect math just as much as anyone else; watching world records and their actions is quite inspiring but at the same time it’s not the average player who is taking this build thinking “I DO X DPS!” without realizing that they just don’t do anywhere near it whether it be skill or situation. For instance the difference between 24 and 25 stacks of might over millions of iterations is huge. It is not tiny. Even by scale of the numbers the graphs would begin to look different at just a few minute shifts. 22 to 25 for instance might look insanely different.

Those numbers are plain and simple realistic damage outputs in raids with a decent party. You can disagree to approve them, you can disagree to acknowledge them, but you cannot disagree with math itself.

Greez!
- Ziggy ;3

Actually I cannot disapprove of the damage outputs but I can disagree with the mathematical logic behind it. It’s the other way around. The values are data, there’s no point to disagreeing with raw data, but the method of projection? No way. To be honest the projected methods are more complicated than necessary. It’s really easy to just look at your toon in whatever armor you chose to deck them out in at the static values and measure it’s effectiveness. You get to be pleasantly surprised when you get 25 stacks of might instead of being overwhelmingly disappointed when you have 20 and no quickness because your something or another dieded.

Now I will return to my den of “Letting this go” and conclude with this:

TL;DR: I think you’re right. I concede to your clear and accurate representation of life.

The problem when comparing Shrapnel to anything is it’s random nature. You can’t actually average against it over the course of X minutes because averages require huge amounts of time and iterations to play out. To be frank most battles are over before 300 samples are even taken ( that is, 300 "111"s ) since large enemies are rarely soloed and small enemies just don’t have the HP.

Actually that’s the major problem with any comparison regarding random events. Averaging them, because of the nature of averaging, creates unrealistic conditions. Furthermore when talking about Siege Rounds it hits twice, so I’m just going to presume that your number is for two hits in your favor but otherwise you halved your dps calculation.

Then you have the question of what type of damage fits the situation. Generally speaking regardless of DPS in a pragmatic setting you actually don’t care how long a bleed is. To explain if you have a regular orrian enemy are you going to go headstrong in there with your 20s bleeds at 50 dmg per tick or just blow the thing up for 6k damage right away. Another major problem is that generally speaking you can’t equate the two tactics anyway; fighting a highly evasive enemy or an enemy that keeps you on the move may be easier with long-term conditions while fighting multiple grunts is more effective with burst. Even if one has a higher calculated DPS (which happens all the time) it doesn’t necessary have the most pragmatic solution.

I think that the biggest problem in most games is people play to maximize numbers which is not necessarily effectiveness. They ignore so many conditions and realities and tack on many other elements that are just outright unrealistic. To be blunt sometimes dealing 3k ASAP is worth more than dealing 6k over 24s. It requires more than just staring at a bunch of end values.

But the good news is that at least everyone understands that the grandmaster traits for the explosives line is horrible. There is no best. Partially because they are all sort of terrible.

I like that guy. I wish I was as creative as him.

I have a question.

1 slot for my copper salvaging machine. Fine.

But can I use the mining and gathering tools on different toons if I fill that slot with them, with them being equipped, or do I have to unequip every time I switch characters? Because if I have to unequip I’ve no idea what to do with them; it’s the same as sticking it in a bank and forgetting about it which I am want to do.

I agree with you. I miss being able to earn skill points playing content I want just like when I was leveling and never hit some maps because I just didn’t like them. Experience and “the end of experience” alongside the gating of experience just seems so awkward. For instance I have to go find some Tyrian Mastery Points doing stuff I purposefully didn’t do to begin with to max out my account now; I have no idea how this was supposed to entice me to get involved.

The whole rework has been a major turnoff.

If using Berserker armor as a mesmer is an exploit then I dare say we should just ban all the mesmers. I support.

Here, here!

Get the pitchforks!

Yashuoa.9527:

DGraves.3720:

Actually making it reset the cooldown after y% HP defeats its purpose. Yes, your idea is actually a good one, but in order for it to work you have to raise the bar on y% since it can’t be an “emergency response” which is the idea. For instance if it resets after 30 seconds and you use a heal skill like healing turret and blow it up just before the reset you can double-up on it.

Thanks.

Just to picture the general idea I used x and y, rather than actual concrete numbers.
The numbers on x and y should be numbers that make the trait fair.
Whichever numbers that will be.

Then I would behind the idea. I think that you are right that the difference isn’t terribly noticeable.

Xyonon.3987:

Wahooo!

Full buffed realistic damages of the ’nade kit and the rifle on a zerk spec are like this:

---

Rifle
Hip Shot: 7056 damage per second
(5777 power / 150 condi / 0.84s cast time)
Blunderbuss: 19960 damage per invested second cast time
(14215 power / 2551 condi / 0.84s cast time)
Jump Shot: 14733 damage per invested second cast time
(21799 power / 300 condi / 1.50s cast time)

Grenade Kit
Grenade: 8192 damage per second
(7742 power / 450 condi / 1.00s cast time)
Shrapnel Grenade: 17873 damage per invested second cast time
(12920 power / 4953 condi / 1.00s cast time)
Freeze Grenade: 12203 damage per invested second cast time
(11753 power / 450 condi / 1.00s cast time)
Poison Grenade: 15256 damage per invested second cast time
(11753 power / 3503 condi / 1.00s cast time)
Grenade Barrage: 28924 damage per invested second cast time
(28024 power / 900 condi / 1.00s cast time)

---

Thiese are the numbers of the max dps build, so yes the rifle would deal slightly more damage with more AS. But the difference is minor and I say the grenade kit is indeed required for optimal max dps. There is NO way around them.

Btw, you mustn’t compare purely a single attack in one sec. This is stupid and should even make sense to an ettin :P You have to compare full rotations until all skills are ready again and then break it down to the damage per second. To compare auto attacks on the engi is even a bigger tabu, since IF you use an auto, it should either be bomb or hammer, because those two are the only ones with more than 10k (no quickness) dps.

Greez!
- Ziggy

These are “vacuum” numbers. They aren’t realistic. For instance “what’s the crit. rate?” and “Is the Engineer alone?” and “Where are the buffs coming from?”

The problem with posting these numbers is two fold:

1. They presume isolated instances. The “Lost Time” problem is basically the idea that the optimal rotation for different strategies involving different skills shifts because of the cooldown on those skills. Comparing a skill with 8s cooldown to one with 5s becomes complex because people isolate the attack to produce what I call “PWM” or “Perfect World Mathematics” which involves basically a stasis in which the moves are the only things that trigger in that time.

2. It’s algebraically wrong. First question is whether or not we can terminate variables? We can terminate might for instance because 875 is added to both damage equations netting an effect of 0. There is absolutely no point to greater than half of those numbers. Critical damage (ferocity) has no value because it’s net zero as it can be applied equally and is. Critical chance is generally averaged in PWM so it’s worthless too because it’s a base factor whether 100 or 50 or 20%. The values are not simplified which inflate them and make them very hard to read for those who aren’t versed enough to know to terminate them to find the real values (despite having found the coefficients this way).

The only things to take into consideration are A ) attack rate, B ) coefficient base ( which you can actually take and add with condition effects for a unified base since they are applied at the same time and are easily solvable), and trait values.

PWM ignores player error, realistic sources for boons and debuffs, implicit costs and optimization, and tends to add in false values, temporary values, and “crest” values (where instead of looking at something on the whole looks at something in a moment and expanding that moment out to the whole) as the norm.

A quick example, if you have a 6s bleed how many seconds does it take to hit the crest? 7. 1 second to apply the first, 6s to apply the next 6, and in the 7th second snapshot you have the crest of these bleeds, or the “max”, but general math I’ve seen done actually goes about this backwards by calculating out the whole bleed and applying it then dividing it which doesn’t capture an accurate wave behavior between applications, dodges, weapon swapping, alternative moves, etc.

But let me stop here. I really don’t want to get into this again. Basically those numbers are hyper-inflated junk in my opinion.

Xyonon.3987:

@DGraves
In my opinion your whole comment makes little sense … :/

You say “it’s great because it’s a bonus bleed and not a dedicated bleed” wich is basicly the same in the long term. So it’s neither good or bad. Just empty words.

You say “no one should use Shrapnel with the intent to apply lasting bleeds, it’s designed for nade dmg”. Uhhh well and how? I guess it increases the nade damage via bleeds, does it not? Even bomb 2 causes multiple procs and it is after all a (if not THE) main source of condi dmg in condi builds.

You say an “ICD would ruin it” wich adapted in the right way would lead to the very same results in the long term. I agree it’d be a nerf for nades, a buff for everything else, but if you take the overall average it doesn’t matter at all. Noone changes their rotation just for shrapnel.

You also say that you should use pistol aa for bleed and not nades with shrapnel with wich I can not agree with, especially with the Sharpshooter trait procing 3 times on nades. Nade aa’s do 50% more bleed per sec than pistol aa’s. Or are you aa-ing with pistol against red Vale Guardian (wich makes sense for the last few % tough, agreed xD)?

Greez!
- Ziggy

I’ll explain.

The trait itself exists for those who don’t use the other two skills. It is equivalent to a placeholder, it is the worst of the three traits in actuality, and it really shouldn’t be used. People use it because it’s BiS for them ( a bonus bleed ) but in reality it isn’t the best of any given skill. The fire bomb is not consistent enough (cooldown) to even begin to talk about the value of shrapnel so that’s out, it might proc once or twice consistently during that pulsing. Realistically it is very much so grenade based and basically rewards grenadiers for strong consistent pressure.

Using shrapnel with the intent to create lasting bleeds is just not wise. It gives consistent pressure builds a slight hand up but otherwise it isn’t build to be a truly reliable source of damage. Going off this vein ICD would ruin it for A ) the pulses in the firebomb which negates your own point, B ) explosions in general because you are slowing the rate in which it procs which slows the rate for all explosions and terminates the chance of a greater the normal outcome rendering it consistent but never actually granting meaningful damage.

Shrapnel is a “reward” for pressure not a “strategic maneuver” for condi; you gamble on your condition damage increasing by X over Y time and use pressure and attack rate.

As for this:

“You also say that you should use pistol aa for bleed and not nades with shrapnel with wich I can not agree with, especially with the Sharpshooter trait procing 3 times on nades.”

The amusing part of this is that you attack Shrapnel but are fine with Sharpshooter which has a 33% chance to proc. You are aware that there is a 1/81 (3^3) chance that all three will go off right? It’s incredibly rare and it is conditional (requires a crit) so if you don’t have 100 crit rate it isn’t even 33%. Basically it’s the same problem.

By the way how much damage in one second does a 100 pt. 6s bleed do versus a 100 pt. 12s bleed?

Trick question, it’s 100. It really doesn’t matter. I knew this error would come up too. Whether it’s 2s or 200s a 100dps bleed does 100 damage a second.

Actually making it reset the cooldown after y% HP defeats its purpose. Yes, your idea is actually a good one, but in order for it to work you have to raise the bar on y% since it can’t be an “emergency response” which is the idea. For instance if it resets after 30 seconds and you use a heal skill like healing turret and blow it up just before the reset you can double-up on it.

insanemaniac.2456:

dont base your claim on autos, autos suck. =/

I had to. Autoattack is the most readily available attack. If I had based it off of, say, Shrapnel Grenade that would have greatly tilted this in the favor of even a pistol because pistols apply more bleeds in the 6 seconds (5s cooldown + 1second activation) cooldown. You cannot compare non-auto-attack bases (which is one of the reasons why I said “I do my math way differently than you guys do yours” ) because if you were to compare it to say pistol’s “Poison Dart Volley” since poison stacks intensity now, you would again start to find that grenades fall far, far behind and the kit itself doesn’t have as many damaging conditions as just basic pistol.

You absolutely must not do it that way since contained therein the time in which one Poison Dart Volley goes off 2 Shrapnel Grenades go off, 6 bleeds, 5 stacks of poison, but what fills those gaps? If we use auto-attack we also eliminate the “lost time” problem.

Shaogin.2679:

DGraves.3720:

Shaogin.2679:

Any chance this trait will ever see a buff? At 15% chance, I hardly ever notice this trait in action. I’d be happy with a reduction on the bleed duration if the percent chance was significantly buffed, so it would be more reliable and feel a bit less random.

To be numerically simple 15% is 1/7. If you through out 3 grenades at a time you can simply take say (1/7+1/7+1/7) or (15%15%15%) [rounded for ease] because they are “or” events in probability and it doesn’t matter which grenade triggers the bleed and we are not looking for the odds of more than one bleed or all three triggering bleeding (1/343 by the way) if that is possible. Basically just auto-attacking you have an 45% chance to cause bleeding with a single grenade volley.

This is relatively high considering it is non-conditional. To be blunt about 1/4 grenades will trigger a 12 ~ 24s bleed with condition duration. That’s pretty good.

The effectiveness is limited to grenades though, and results tend to be completely random. Sometimes it works great, but other times I’ve gone through quite a few cycles of grenades with no procs. I’m just one of those people that isn’t a fan of rng affecting combat too much. Personally I’d prefer a higher chance with an icd.

Well that’s actually what makes Shrapnel so great; it is a “bonus bleed” rather than a “dedicated bleed” so you could proc it all the way through and get 3 + 3 + 1 (sigil of earth) + 1 (if crit) if you were super lucky on a shrapnel grenade throw! Woohoo!

But really, no one should use Shrapnel with the intent to apply lasting bleeds. It is specifically designed for grenade damage. Yeah, you can proc it with mortar but with bomb there are better options like the Big Ol’ or you can take Siege Rounds. In reality shrapnel is not for condition damage builds; it adds condition damage pretty regularly if I may say so even with worst case scenario math [(1-X)^Y where X is the probability of the event (.15) and Y is the total number of grenades over that time] but yeah it is inconsistent on purpose and is working as intended.

I would hate for Shrapnel to get an ICD though. That would ruin it. You may as well just take a pistol because it attacks faster if you really want to stack bleed. There’s no meaningful difference between conditions based solely on their longevity.

insanemaniac.2456:

DGraves.3720:

Even the modern condition rotations are very poor including the 42 step program that people claim is worthwhile remembering.

we dont claim that is worth remembering. in fact, most people who know their class tell you metabattle is only a starting point for how to play, because youll almost always want to change a thing or 2 to either make the build playable, easier, or suited to your current situation.

in terms of that 42 step rotation… following the rotation to the letter is impractical and nearly impossible to do in any real situation because you nearly always have to actually react to what the enemy is doing. so dont. instead, keep your burns on cd. keep nades 2 on cd. once you have a feel for keeping those on cd, fill the rest of the time with literally any other skill that has condis on it and any other hard hitter.

I was being slightly factitious when I said that but this is actually my point; generally speaking rotations longer than 6 steps (2 enemy attack cycles) are not worthwhile.

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.

Shaogin.2679:

Any chance this trait will ever see a buff? At 15% chance, I hardly ever notice this trait in action. I’d be happy with a reduction on the bleed duration if the percent chance was significantly buffed, so it would be more reliable and feel a bit less random.

To be numerically simple 15% is 1/7. If you through out 3 grenades at a time you can simply take say (1/7+1/7+1/7) or (15%15%15%) [rounded for ease] because they are “or” events in probability and it doesn’t matter which grenade triggers the bleed and we are not looking for the odds of more than one bleed or all three triggering bleeding (1/343 by the way) if that is possible. Basically just auto-attacking you have an 45% chance to cause bleeding with a single grenade volley.

This is relatively high considering it is non-conditional. To be blunt about 1/4 grenades will trigger a 12 ~ 24s bleed with condition duration. That’s pretty good.

The one thing I will admit about engineers is that they are not good with conditions. They used to be but many changes such as the removal of bleed / burn from turrets and from rifle’s basic attack began to steer this class towards direct damage and mitigation. Even the modern condition rotations are very poor including the 42 step program that people claim is worthwhile remembering.

Azure.8670:

DGraves.3720:

Grenades were never required for max DPS.

In pve? Please explain this one

I’d best not. Let’s presume I said nothing. That’s just a fight waiting to happen.

Applied Force is best used in PvE. Do not use it in PvP. PvP should be about either burst / hassle (conditions) or self-maintenance; adaptive armor will get you much further. 100% quickness is useless in scenarios where A. there aren’t enough targets to generate a threat, B. nothing has enough HP (and players do not in PvP; I mean hundreds of thousands or more…) to generate a time sink or C. the tactics surrounding quickness do not present real opportunities.

Grenades were never required for max DPS.

Wand Engineer will be better than Hammer Engineer anyway.

“Strength vs Hoelbrak: Is Hoelbrak really better… what am I missing? In a build that’s generating a lot of might consistently the flat +5% extra damage increase from Strength seems really good.”

I imagine it’s the condition duration removal. That’s about it though between the two; in my opinion they are equal unless you look at that last piece. Then again the question is also whether that 5% damage is worth shedding conditions 20% faster.

In the worst case scenario …

Everything is best. -koan

What needs to happen is flamethrower needs to work under water. Everything else doesn’t matter. Why can’t I have a thermite flamethrower anyway? Stupid Inquest gets underwater flamethrowers. :/

Adellunaki.5024:

I tried to create some synergy… Making builds for content I’m not at yet is hard :/

Why not just be patient? I swore up and down I’d be using a pistol/shield conditioneer with a bleed build of the ages for the first 76 levels and ended up a flametank. Seriously, don’t work too hard to live in the future. Planning is good but so is experimentation.

You’ll get there.

But I will at least state that hammers are not great for conditions. But keep in mind that it is very, very rare an engineer keeps “one kit” or “one weapon” up so you may find your hammer swaps might be defensive and your offensive kit is grenades or something. Stranger things have happened in Engi-land.

I have to do fractals to get mastery points so that I don’t have to do fractals. I feel your pain.

I just want to punch Jormag in the face. I want that to be an achievement too, “Punch Jormag”. I will unequip all my weapons and punch him in the face dead or alive. One Punch Man v. Jormag?

Xanthin.2814:

Well anet could always have a public test server where the community and the devs could collaborate on new balance and feature patches before they hit the live server, and not have a week of bug fixes because you bug fixed 95% of the issues while it was in actual testing, not by a few QA guys that clearly dont know anything about the classes they are balancing.

nerf rev aa because you shouldnt aa spam and be top dps,

buff teef aa to crazy high dps lvls, teefs now spam 1 all day

( ????? )

also the fact that not every single class is on equal ground in every game mode, attributes to poor balancing decisions that can only stem from a lack of understanding of their own product. Were they to actually collaborate with the player base instead of these kitten forum posts we could have a game worthy of esports, but no ptr, and space balance updates that are more along the lines of gutting one class and overbuffing another 3-4 times a year, esports wont happen

The designer/client problem is eternal.

Let’s say that you are painting someone’s portrait. This person has no artistic ability but is not happy with your painting and states that they will direct you in how to paint their portrait. Alright, so you take their directions and it looks significantly worse than the previous painting, but the question is fundamentally whose fault that is.

There is no right answer. Some would say it is the client because they wanted things their way and so totally got their way by directing the picture even though it turned out worse. Some would say it is the artist because the artist did not act in favor of the client by asserting that their depiction was accurate and the best direction to go in.

For programming in this case Thief had been, for a very long time, lagging behind. They are a burst class so their strikes, each one, needs to be deadly enough to mow down highly defensive builds meanwhile revenant was designed as the, from what I see anyway, the boon / condi heavy armored warrior. They aren’t supposed to press 1 and win because that requires none of their class specific energy, focuses on only one weapon making it a clear best choice, and with herald they run around draped in constant boons again at no cost to them.

The client wants the uber revenant (of course) and sees no value to boosting the thief. The artist wants their design to be respected and concept to be fleshed out and boosts the thief and does not want everyone pressing 1 with a sword and a single trait line powering their revenant.

I do, but that isn’t what the point is; if you don’t make the build you won’t do as well as if you did. You are taking the right steps by trying to make a build, so don’t get discouraged, but you need to sit down with yourself and answer these questions:

1. Am I an Offensive or Defensive Role?
2. Am I Direct Damage or Condition Damage?
3. Am I A Glass Cannon or Damage Sponge?
4. Am I Dependent or Independent?

The first question would be whether you are supposed to be a main source of damage or a form of support ( which in this case is tanking ) so then using just that theme above damage is not your primary concern. This effects your next steps.

The second of whether you are condition or direct damage is important. I recommend you go condition, actually, since the downtime for condition builds is significantly lower (you apply a bleed and it keeps ticking long beyond your initial hit and through your dodges, etc.) and significantly tankier (Dire?) without suffering for taking that toughness / vitality (because condition damage isn’t dependent on any other stat and power is dependent on precision and ferocity both) and then build into this. So don’t take things that increase critical hit chance unless they are the best option for that line.

For instance if you took invigorating speed that means you want some swiftness right? Why not take rapid regeneration instead of mass momentum? More staying power with a heal over time plus vigor?

3. I think you understand this one. But if you are a damage sponge think about what boons you can get on yourself and try to manage their duration properly for Iron Blooded to work off of.

4. This is the king question. Your answer does not always have to be one or the other by the way but it allows you to measure how strong you are if you ever have to solo or if your primary boon giver dies and cannot be revived due to the situation, etc. Just think of the worst case scenario and use that as a mental test of whether you’d be able to rise to the top or not.

Anyway, this is too long, but even if you ignore the above …

Build your own builds. Always. Never copy. You can copy an idea or a theme but do not copy a build. Most people who copy builds do not have the same working mindset as the players who make and effectively play them.

The problem here is that you didn’t explain or give a theme. I don’t see any synergy, no boons to really capitalize on iron blooded, no conditions for modified ammunition, no reason at all to take mass momentum since the might stacks will be too few and too sparse, you aren’t using heavy armor exploit so I don’t see the point of gaining invigorating speed (specifically because you took critical enhancing abilities) since you aren’t taking elixir B even.

Ultimately you won’t really do much; even if you were running “tank” you’d be better off with either some form of consistent boon application to yourself that wasn’t dependent on situational behavior (like dodging) because the entire point of dodging is to evade damage rendering iron blooded wasted or at least over too quickly.

This needs direction. You’ve multiple ideas, some stronger than others, going on here but no actual end-goal. Even if you ran knights (and I presume you would since you have crit chance enhancement as a primary focus?) you wouldn’t be much of a tank nor would you do any real damage or have any strong sustain.

Just my opinion.

By the way I highly recommend you do not make builds with the idea that other players will take care of your needs. Unless you are in a dedicated group that specifically states they have your boons / conditions covered do not presume you will get them from any given source. Those builds tend to fail when outside of their “perfect element” almost instantly.

Teletric.3821:

So I was doing the Verdant Brink event in which you have to bomb the Wyvern and I thought, “How cool would it be if engies could use their bomb kits while gliding to drop bombs below?”.
Yes, I am aware we will most likely never see this happen, but I thought it would be a nice little thought.
What do you guys think?

Since gliding exists outside of Maguuma now this would just be too powerful for the rest of Tyria. Heck some of the jumping puzzles are now circumvented by gliding through them so I can’t imagine the bosses and other mobs would do well.

This is both self-contradictory and vague. If all the minor traits are universal (which by the way the trait lines used to have this by giving +X stat for taking the line; I do not miss that system at all) then how exactly can traits be mostly “situational”? I didn’t quite make it past the fifth bullet because my brain couldn’t handle your brilliant credo.

1. Or just make it so it does it consecutively like it does with crafting until the materials in the slots disappear. One-click solution is less carpal tunnel liability.

2. It would be really great if it worked, wasn’t ever buggy, and didn’t allow for glitching at certain times, etc. I would absolutely love to change to my toughness gear right when I’m about to die and then swap back into my berserker nonsense after the moment of truth has passed. I can understand 4000 clicks but at most this is 14, 2 weapons, 6 armor and 6 trinkets. Not worth blowing up the game for.

3. Stop throwing your money at the screen and put your pants back on.

4. They did think about this. And thus, Raids. What would be the point of making a dungeon system beside a dungeon system? Just make another raid for the casuals, weaklings, and hopeless and call it “Pretty Garden of Butterflies” since all a dungeon is happens to be a dumbed down raid. 3x the work for -1 profit.

Manuhell.2759:

Seems like a nice trait, at least for PvE. Still, it requires taking that line over something else. I wonder if it could be worth the opportunity cost for a condi.

It is. Think of quickness as a direct increase to the number of conditions you can apply over X time. So using AA gun as an example it’s 1 bleed every second, that gets shortened to about 1 every half a second, making the damage compress into the same time block effectively increasing it by double in this case. For grenades the same thing is true with 6 grenades in the same time as 3 you’ll get more bleeds from the trait; to get the might take the Alchemy line and go to town; since quickness is effected by boon duration you’ll get a nice boost from the 20% included in the line plus the might from the potions, plus the might from drinking a potion, plus might from whatever source you see fit. And it leaves you with one open trait line.

I’d take firearms of course so I could swap into flamethrower (even if unused, but it often is in condition anyway for obvious reasons) just so I could stack some might passively; you fall under the limit, stay in it for a few seconds using the myriad of burning opportunities or laying a flame field or something, get above, go right back to it.

Synergizes well in my opinion. But that’s just what I would do.

Finally, something worth losing my stuffing over!

While innovation is born of laziness there comes a point where sloth has no place in the world. You click the armor piece and it shows you the whole 2 other options you have. You only have to set 9 skills at all on your skill tab and have a total of 6 lines to choose from to do so.

I believe in you! You can do this!

Rash.6514:

I sort of agree with the OP. I would rather do more things (like a larger collection achievement) to get my legendary than farm for gold/items. There is no glory nor honor in farming, but there is in doing and completing game content.

There is no glory in jumping puzzles or randomly getting spoon drops from bosses. Please, let us not argue about this, as we both know it true.

Turrets were never that great. The fact that they suffered nerfs amuses me. The first nerf they suffered was the nail in their coffin: They couldn’t apply conditions anymore. The bleeding from the gun turret (overcharge <3) and burning from the rocket turret is what made them at all useful for damage since the conditions used your stats rather than presets. Now?

Pft. You may as well just save the skill points (if only that were an option)!

Isn’t the GW2W dedicated to this effort though? And various other unofficial sources?

Dayra.7405:

DGraves.3720:

I miss when you would get skill points for leveling up. I want a Chronomancer without playing in the jungle with a Mesmer. . . Because I am really bad at Mesmer.

That is not really a problem, you can get a total of 214 unused HP from Tyria, Silverwaste, Dry Top and WvW, as soon as you have gliding 2 and Nuuhloch tunnels achieved with a char you play better you can get the missing 40 points without fighting a single mob in the new area.

The length of time is more of a concern than the nature of availability though. You don’t earn skill points as you play anymore once you hit level 80 which was not the case before; if there wasn’t a conversion of skill points to spirit shards I would have easily had enough stored up to get the specialization on three characters day 1.

I guess for me, having been around then and thinking back on that, it just sort of sucks that instead of doing events (playing the game) I get to take a tour of sticking my hand in glowing lights.

Just run defensive condition gear if it is that big of a problem to you. That way you get all the benefits of super toughness , they get none, and you are now taking no damage and they are melting under your godlike “counter god” skill.

I need this. I can die in dungeons all by my lonesome as many times as necessary to lern2play

I miss when you would get skill points for leveling up. I want a Chronomancer without playing in the jungle with a Mesmer. . . Because I am really bad at Mesmer.