@fluxit: I’m going to do a slightly simpler thought experiment/analysis, see what you think of it.
Instead of discussing the minutiae of a shatter condie combo, I’m going to look at the specific differences in impact and build between standard glassy shatter and condie shatter.
First, the Defense.
You’re right in that condie has more toughness. Unfortunately, actual defense is far more a function of avoidance and sustain than raw damage mitigation from armor. PU condie builds have stealth, prot, regen, etc to mitigate and avoid damage, and that gives them a ton of defense. Condie shatter has precisely what glassy shatter has…just with a tad bit more toughness. That 10k backstab drops to 8k…a significant difference, but you’ll still die ultimately. For that reason, I assume that the defense diffference between condie shatter and normal shatter is almost non-existent, albeit a small lean towards condie shatter.
Now for the Offense.
There are several aspects of offense in a shatter build. One is what happens when your offense successfully connects, but the other is actually getting that offense to connect at all.
Even the best shatter players don’t land all of their shatters, and getting off a multiple shatter combo is going to happen incredibly rarely in a normal fight, generally necessitating a surprise start from stealth to actually succeed in that. The ease of landing this shatter greatly varies from build to build as well. Leap/swap is very important for landing a strong combo, and some shatter condie builds won’t take sword (I know yours does). Additionally, power builds tend to have more high-impact skills that can bait a dodge (mirror blade, iZerker, etc), and so I’ll give the edge of actually landing a shatter to the power build.
The other aspect of offense is what actually happens once that shatter connects, and this is the most interesting part.
Power Shatter
From a dry start with really no setup, a power shatter can pump out 3k*4 if you get everything to land. Note the *4 modifier is possible because of IP. This results in 12k instant damage, potentially higher if you pull off a combo like point blank mirror blade or diversion vuln stacking. That’s pretty much it, and once that damage lands mitigation is not possible. Additionally note that this is with mind wrack, which has half the cooldown of cry.
Condition Shatter
From a dry start with no setup, a condition shatter can currently unload 3 stacks of torment, 6 stacks of confusion, and 3 stacks of vuln. This torment will do 2868 damage over 10 seconds in total, 5737 if they’re moving and if they use no condition removal. The confusion is really too variable to analyze, and the vuln is simply a cover condition (which is important though, don’t get me wrong).
You can see the difference here. So much of your discussion begins at a point like:
we need to talk about your opponents options when they notice they initially have 5+ stacks of torment, confusion, bleeding, and vulnerability
To get to that point requires a lot of things to happen though! They need to have eaten perhaps the torment block, a shatter or two, taken a lot of phantasm hits. You can’t compare a simple power shatter to that situation, you compare that situation to…eating a power shatter and a blurred frenzy and having an iZerker and iSwordsman chewing on you. Both builds have the capability to provide outstanding pressure and limit options, but one simply does it with a far far higher potency.
