What are the best damage attributes for fractals/raids/bosses?

I'm trying to decide what kind of armor I should get.I know I want to focus on doing condition damage with my engineer.I also know I want precision because engineer has skills that allow him to proc more conditions off crits. Plus it has the added bonus of increasing DPS.

Power would seem a natural third choice... However, I am wondering if condition duration would actually output better long term DPS against tough enemies than strait power would?I would be using a double pistol build with firearms traits.

Condition damage for raids and fractals uses full Viper gear. Power builds use full Berserker. The choice between the two builds mostly depends on the boss you are fighting in raids.

@Tsar CUBE.9281 said:Condition damage for raids and fractals uses full Viper gear. Power builds use full Berserker. The choice between the two builds mostly depends on the boss you are fighting in raids.

Well, I also have the option of sinister gear. +condition damage, precision, power, without expertise.It gives me more condition damage and precision than vipers but no expertise and less power.

Considering that I already get an automatic 50% condition duration on pistol skills from firearms trait, I could easily have a lot of wasted expertise depending on what buffs and runes I have. And with my pistol centric build I don't plan to have enough conditions coming from other sources to worry about their durations.

So I'm wondering, should my priority be to try to cap my condi duration at 100% before I start worrying about condition damage? Or should I just go max condition damage/precision in my gear since I can get 50% duration from traits and +15% from runes, and then I've got food/trinket buffs on top of that?

expertise is more important than condition damage in raids as fights will last a long time. Think if it this way; with expertise, the condition you applied will still be on the boss by the time your cds are done, allowing you to stack them, where as pure condi damage, they'll finish ticking shortly after you use them.

@Rise.8259 said:So I'm wondering, should my priority be to try to cap my condi duration at 100% before I start worrying about condition damage? Or should I just go max condition damage/precision in my gear since I can get 50% duration from traits and +15% from runes, and then I've got food/trinket buffs on top of that?

You shouldn't worry about min-maxing the intermediate stages of armor at all. Assuming you can't afford full ascended viper's yet, use whatever budget condi armor you can get ahold of. Trinkets should start viper's (because you can, with LS3 maps) and sure, if you have exotic choosy armor boxes with Sinister, that's good.

For fractals, condi is generally less favored because there's ramp up time and some fights are really quick, if you have a good team. For teams that take longer (or PUGs), then you definitely want longer duration conditions for your ultimate set.

Put another way, you're going to spend as little time as possible using sub-optimized gear, so spend as little coin|effort|resources on it, too; save that for the stuff you really want.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Rise.8259 said:So I'm wondering, should my priority be to try to cap my condi duration at 100% before I start worrying about condition damage? Or should I just go max condition damage/precision in my gear since I can get 50% duration from traits and +15% from runes, and then I've got food/trinket buffs on top of that?

I guess it depends on how easy ascended is to get compared with exotic. To me, it seems it will be a long time before I ever see a complete set of ascended. I need some good exotic armor to carry me until then. And I can minimize the cost if I craft it myself, using components I've collected in loot and buying what I don't have. On top of that, I think I will end up having three different viable builds, possibly four, with my engineer. They will all need their own item set if I want to use them, so ascended for all four probably isn't happening anytime soon either. In which case I'll need the exotic options.

@Rise.8259 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Rise.8259 said:So I'm wondering, should my priority be to try to cap my condi duration at 100% before I start worrying about condition damage? Or should I just go max condition damage/precision in my gear since I can get 50% duration from traits and +15% from runes, and then I've got food/trinket buffs on top of that?

Snowcrows guide on Engineer/Holosmith power build: https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/engineer/holosmith/power/

Since it's full berserker gear, it's very cheap to get hold of the exotic version.

The condition builds are select able at the top too. Maybe start with a power build and then work your way to condi.

As far as fractals, you will eventually need ascended armor once you want to venture into T4 fractals simply due to the agony resistance required. I'd recommend going for the power build due to reasons mentioned by IWN.

@Sephylon.4938 said:expertise is more important than condition damage in raids as fights will last a long time. Think if it this way; with expertise, the condition you applied will still be on the boss by the time your cds are done, allowing you to stack them, where as pure condi damage, they'll finish ticking shortly after you use them.

^ Listen to this person, Viper's gear is best gear on condition damage builds in raids. Since you said you were going to craft your own exotic gear that you want to use for a long time, go straight for Viper's you wont regret it. But as has been mentioned above, grab ascended trinkets and back pieces from achievements and tokens in HoT or Living story Season 3 maps. Sadly there is no easy way to get ascended pistols from achievements so you will be stuck on exotics until you buy the ascended version with raid tokens. As for Runes, you should use Superior Rune of the Renegade. For Sigils you want superior sigil of malice for +10% condi duration and probably Superior sigil of geomancy.

@Tsar CUBE.9281 said:Sadly there is no easy way to get ascended pistols from achievements so you will be stuck on exotics until you buy the ascended version with raid tokens. As for Runes, you should use Superior Rune of the Renegade. For Sigils you want superior sigil of malice for +10% condi duration and probably Superior sigil of geomancy.

Not easy but there is way to grab an ascended weapon for sure, At the moment while season in spvp is opnen, finishing chain of chest will get you 3 boxes of grandmaster marks, enough to get 1 weapon from pvp vendor for 10 gold. By the end of this chain one will have enough ascended shards to get couple of mist trinkets with selectable stats as well.I understand pvp is not for everyone.