Grieving vs Viper in Raids.

So I was looking at the stats. Will Grieving replace Vipers for raids? For Engi, Necro, Mesmer?

No, it has no expertise stats.

If you can get 100% condi duration without taking full vipers, then using grieving or likely the best solution for the remaining pieces. This does however depend on class, as Sinister is a better filler stat for classes with low power coefficients.

I believe you want to replace sinister with grieving if your build allows you to do so. But otherwise it's full viper for the expertise.

Thanks for the info. It didn't occur to me it has no condition duration, which is the most valuable stat I suppose for condition builds.

@Riku.4821 said:Thanks for the info. It didn't occur to me it has no condition duration, which is the most valuable stat I suppose for condition builds.

I think that depends. If you're able to constantly reapply the conditions, you might not even need the expertise to extend the duration. You could get away with your trinkets holding expertise so it's long enough for you to apply another stack.

So Thief's Pistol, Thief's Dagger auto, Thief's Death Blossom, and Renegade's auto attack, I think Engie Pistol all naturally apply a stack of bleed. If you rely a lot on your Utilities for applying condition, or the cool downs are really long, expertise may be a better grab.

Viper's has expertise and thus will never be replaced by Grieving. Meanwhile, no condition DPS class deals enough power damage (or has enough critical hit chance) to take advantage of Grieving's ferocity, and thus Sinister will still be better.

@Rising Dusk.2408 said:Viper's has expertise and thus will never be replaced by Grieving. Meanwhile, no condition DPS class deals enough power damage (or has enough critical hit chance) to take advantage of Grieving's ferocity, and thus Sinister will still be better.

I wouldn't say that till you get use cases.

Grievings sounds like it'd be better in PvP scenarios, where you have a lot more front loaded damage that a player won't shake off easily with a condi cleanse. But most of your damage will still come from the needs of critical hits. If you're using a weapon set where the autos naturally do conditions, or you're able to throw weak condi's quickly - it'd probably be worth it to look into it here.

Vipers runs on the idea that a creature won't shake it off quickly. So you lose out a power stat for a condi stat. Vipers arguably will do more damage, but over time. Where Griever's will do more damage immediately.

Even then, Griever's may potentially keep up with Vipers depending on the spec, and the player's rotations.

Probably not for the ones you posted but I think grieving will be REALLY good for firebrand

@Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497 said:

@Riku.4821 said:Thanks for the info. It didn't occur to me it has no condition duration, which is the most valuable stat I suppose for condition builds.

You miss the point of Expertise stat. It's not there so you can "apply another stack before previous is finished". It's there to increase the number of ticks (and thus damage) of every single stack you apply. If your stacks last even 50% longer on the target, due to expertise, it means your damage has just jumped by 50%. Going from 0% to 100% on bonus condi duration means you have doubled your damage. That's extremely significant.

The only situation where it might not be so is when the target cleanses (so, basically, in PvP environment).

Just a small hint:

In pve grieving does not compete with vipers. It competes with sinister.

The reason is quite simple:

• condition duration is still the most powerful damage increase for condition builds next to condition damage, but caps at 100%
• only if you cap condition duration will there be any reason to move away from vipers
• if you move away from vipers, you either take sinister or grieving

Thus, grieving competes with sinister.

@Riku.4821 said:So I was looking at the stats. Will Grieving replace Vipers for raids? For Engi, Necro, Mesmer?

For these? Unlikely. For Firebrand? Maybe.

I think grieving is basically only going to be worth considering for classes that apply one and only one condition in their rotation which makes it firebrand and ele. Even then I think ele is out of the picture due to low crit chance while firebrand can get a bonus 15% crit chance from traits, was playing with the build editor and I believe you can get something like 70% crit chance and matching sinister condition duration and condition damage but you also get 40% more crit damage and 210 more power.

Sinister you crit more 88% vs 72% but sinister you crit for 150% damage vs 192%. Imo that 42% crit damage and extra power is going to be worth more than the 16% increased chance but it is going to be close in tests and I doubt anyone is going to kick you for turning up in grieving or sinister.

Weaver gets bonus 15% on a trait as well. Just saying.

@Cyninja.2954 said:Just a small hint:

In pve grieving does not compete with vipers. It competes with sinister.

The reason is quite simple:

• condition duration is still the most powerful damage increase for condition builds next to condition damage, but caps at 100%
• only if you cap condition duration will there be any reason to move away from vipers
• if you move away from vipers, you either take sinister or grieving

Thus, grieving competes with sinister.

What about setups that have very low base duration conditions? For example, the 3 second burn duration on Dhuumfire - is moving that duration to 6 seconds worth sacrificing ~ 50% ferocity, especially when you'd have ~ 100% crit rate as a Reaper?

I know that's a jank build regardless, but I assure you that's a serious question.

I hope they fix Axe for firebrand. Using a power weapon like scepter on a condi build is beyond stupid.

@Zenith.7301 said:I hope they fix Axe for firebrand. Using a power weapon like scepter on a condi build is beyond stupid.

I also want the Axe to become better for I have been enjoying it quite a bit. Though Scepter is completely stupid and you'd never expect it to be the go to damage weapon.

@Zenith.7301 said:I hope they fix Axe for firebrand. Using a power weapon like scepter on a condi build is beyond stupid.

Are you sure? They just introduced a Power/Condi, Precision/Ferocity stat set.

@Bonesaw.9286 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Just a small hint:

In pve grieving does not compete with vipers. It competes with sinister.

The reason is quite simple:

• condition duration is still the most powerful damage increase for condition builds next to condition damage, but caps at 100%
• only if you cap condition duration will there be any reason to move away from vipers
• if you move away from vipers, you either take sinister or grieving

Thus, grieving competes with sinister.

Base duration does not matter in context of value increase (only in absolute numbers eventually but that is more dependant on traits and on crit effects for exmaple).

Increasing a 3 second burn to 6 seconds is a 100% damage increase.

Increasing a 12 second bleed to 24 seconds is a 100% damage increase.

Not 100% sure on the reaper math, but I'll assume that this remains true if we take quantifies condition reaper build (https://qtfy.eu/guildwars/necromancer/condi-reaper-quick-guide/). The setup is to maximise bleed duration to 100% (the main condition damage of the build), then rest take Sinister. Note though, this build is pre PoF so no grieving stat yet.

So once again, the moment your main condition damage duration hits cap 100%, we start replacing for Sinister/Grieving.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497 said:

@Riku.4821 said:Thanks for the info. It didn't occur to me it has no condition duration, which is the most valuable stat I suppose for condition builds.

No I think I know the point about the expertise stack. The expertise stack means that you're able to get more out of each stack of condi that you apply. If your skill cool downs are long, or you do a hit and run playstyle, then this would probably be a very important thing to maintain.

But if you naturally deal a lot of power damage, and don't want to worry about someone or a creature somehow dropping your condis or throwing them back at you, you can trade off the extra ticks for up front damage and not be stuck in the mud.

@Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497 said:

@Riku.4821 said:Thanks for the info. It didn't occur to me it has no condition duration, which is the most valuable stat I suppose for condition builds.

Not an issue in pve. This thread is about grieving-vs-viper-in-raids not expertise in all game modes. Yes in wvw expertise might not be as valuable as in raids or pve, but it's powerful enough currently that you want to have 100% condition duration before taking power damage stats in pve.

If you naturally deal a lot of power damage AND are running a power build, obviously you would not want expertise. Condition builds do though. If they add a boss or enemy that throws back conditions, we can revisit the issue if this one fight might need a different type of gear.

OP: This is exactly the type of question you can answer for yourself by using common sense.

Your average condi build deals about 85% of its damage through conditions and about 15% in direct damage (which is kind of inevitable, since all skills have damage coefficients). 15 points of expertise / ferocity translate into 1% of condi duration / crit damage respectively. Don't forget that your base crit damage is 150% (which makes investing into crit damage less efficient because you need more ferocity to achieve the same increase in effective power) AND your crit chance is probably less than 100%, which means you'll not get the benefit of your crit damage with every attack.

By replacing your viper gear with grieving, you sacrifice a significant amount of your condi damage to gain a negligible amount of power damage, effecitvely making your build do less damage with no gain. Why would anyone do that?

Now if your build can achieve enough condi duration without the use of viper gear (therefore making it a sinister build), it does make sense to ask whether it's wise to replace it by grieving. Grieving does have slightly less condi damage (and precision) than sinister, but it makes up for it with higher power and ferocity. The key thing to look at here is your crit chance (which determines whether ferocity is worth it) and damage coefficients on your skills. As it turns out, condi firebrand currently deals enough power-based damage that makes usage of grieving stats worth it, because your power damage gain will outweigh the condi damage loss. But in this case there was never any viper gear to begin with, the question was between sinister and grieving.

There is a chance for grieving to become a thing but a build has to have certain thing for it to work

1. Condi builds that deal almost all their damage (90% +) and have modifiers for that condi duration
2. A power build that either produces a large amount of conditions or can be slightly modified to do so
3. A Condi build that have skills with high damage multipler, coefficients, and or base damage

If you can meet #1 and #2 or #3 then there is a possibility for grieving to work

The builds right now that come to mind are burn gaurd and power/ Condi ele.