The benchmarks Viper vs sinister vs grieving ?

Hello,

I tried a bit to compare myself against the golem or in instance/explo, I don't follow the same rotation everytime so even with one set I don't get the same result; but actually I get better results with Sinister + smoldering sigil and balthazar runes.I don't get why viper+renegade runes is privileged as we lost a lot of power/precision/condition to get condition duration while we could use balthazar runes and even get Fire dots on the healing mantra.

So do you have the recents benchmarks that compare theses sets, please ?

I don't FB in raids, despite maining guard (currently FB) in Fractals and WvW - I dislike using Renewed Focus to recharge the F1 for pure damage so much, and end up in the druid role mostly, so I can't comment on the raid rotation that much, but I do recall doing some testing with Balthazar since historically I used it for burn builds since most of our cdmg comes from burn. I don't have the numbers because that scratch paper got tossed once I made a decision, but I landed on viper + berserker runes. (the accepted ideal at the time was RENEGADE runes but the difference was marginal and I already had berserker runes. Except where noted, I'll treat viper+berserker as the same as viper+renegade, and compare to sinister+balthazar)

Here are some of the reasons why:

1. The straight cdmg % bonus is very powerful. (Here, Renegade wins, though Berserker rune offsets that some with a small straight dmg bonus.)
2. The Balthazar 6-rune bonus, while good synergy, is negligible since it's only 1 stack at a base 3-seconds and does not nearly compete with the other runes.
3. In general, 4-stat sets provide more total stats than 3-stat ones, minimizing the "core stat" loss to expertise.
4. Either alternate set has stat bonuses (power or feroc) that further offset the loss of "core stat" to expertise.
5. Running axe/torch as one weapon-set means you do a decent amount of bleeds that historically guards didn't do - so viper's broader cdur is more valuable there.
6. Either set can get to 100% burn duration, so burn duration is even.

While its true that this build ends up with lower condition damage overall than you could get if you didn't sink as many points into expertise, you can see the offsets above. One thing that may not be obvious looking at that list is that burning as a condition is inherently base-heavy - that is to say, the return for condition damage is lower than most any other damaging condition. This means the 5 or 7% raw increase in output outclasses the additional damage you'd get with slightly higher condition damage much more easily than it would, say, for a class who's primary condition damage is from bleeding or torment.

Not sure how to balance this with your objective experience, especially since my own testing is quite dated, but I'd guess you're not getting both equally to 100% burn duration, you're not using the axe bleeds, or you're a victim to "close enough" numbers that make your admitted variances too large to make good comparisons.