Condi Roaming Scrapper

Anyone tried it? Power hammer still just feels too hard to stay on target and slow to kill. Days of sustain, but not enough punch. Seems to me all that sustain would be better served stacking condis and letting them tick.

Power hammer is only alright in terms of damage, but that's not what the hammer was designed for. It has a good mix of sustain and CC while also having descent power damage from the auto attack. The reason why hammer is mostly used in PvP and WvW is for the sustain and tanking capabilities. P/p scrapper is an odd build in my opinion. Not saying that it doesn't work, but that it's more limited compared to core engineer.

Been running my old condi scrapper since patch day and yep works good. P/p, trailblazer with some healing thrown in, tools/firearms/scrapper with 66% swiftness runes. Heal gyro, toolkit, bulwark, purge, sneak. The new gyros make it much better than before, to the point where you can go toe to toe with a decent condi mirage. It is better now vs heavy melee pressure (spellbreaker, holo, reaper etc) but otherwise it still suffer the same flaws as it always has. Low amount of condis, so easily cleansed. Pretty much only a single burst in the blowtorch which is very good but unreliable as all kitten. Utter crap in zergs so pigeonholed into roaming and smallscale. Just like a condi mirage, it looses oomph the more players we are talking about.

It also have a potentially fatal flaw in future WvW when mounts have settled - it simply cannot dismount anything that didnt literally ran in front of it and presented its kitten for a deep blowtorch session. Dont have the range, dont have the damage, cant cc it. The sneak gyro is the redeeming factor for most of the flaws and fortunetly it helps here too.

If it's nerfed... well lets just say I will probably turn back to something with considerably more ranged burst cough power mirage hark

Due to the way condi cleanse works in this game, the more players there are, the less effective it is. You only need 1 cleanse to wipe out all those burns from 5 players in an instant.

I still play it, but I recognize that it is not strong compared to most roamers.

• You're working twice as hard with half the range of most roamers
• You have to wait up to 10s for opponents to die even if you land all your skills and they don't cleanse
• They can cleanse your damage even if you land your difficult to land, medium-cooldown skills - some can cleanse everything you throw at them indefinitely in a 1v1. It only gets worse in larger engagements.

For those downsides, you get: the ability to run Dire/Trailblazer armour and be very tanky, and you get great sustain from Scrapper.

If you want to play it, you need to be good with cover condi and make sure you're not reapplying your damaging conditions when they're deepest in the stack. Even then, it's an uphill battle.

I recommend Toolkit for Magnet pull combos, traited Rocket Boots for mobility 'cause god knows you need it, and Dire over Trailblazer.

It's not that bad. (In WvW roaming)Firearms/Alchemy/scrapper I run the flamtrower and elexirgun; with a good read you can place 7-8 brunings, and poison weakness cripple etc behind to cover. Scrapper sustain so much you should run grieving or sinister to deal some physical dmg too; conditions will never be sufficient.

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:Scrapper sustain so much you should run grieving or sinister to deal some physical dmg too; conditions will never be sufficient.I really disagree with that because the power damage output is so low it wont matter much. Except one single skill, the burn on crit, you have zero need for precision or ferocity (the bleed proc is meh). And the burn still procs every now and then due to fury and such. Without dual weaponry you cant really make a proc set either, you want that condi dmg boost (stack or base) and standard energy.

In regards to trailblazer vs dire, its pretty much the same thing in the end. I prefer trailblazers in order to lengthen secondary condi (immo, cripples, poison, etc) at the cost of a little less base damage.

@"Tinnel.4369" said:Anyone tried it? Power hammer still just feels too hard to stay on target and slow to kill. Days of sustain, but not enough punch. Seems to me all that sustain would be better served stacking condis and letting them tick.

I posted this raw gameplay about a month ago (pre-patch), which you may be interested in.

@bethekey.8314 said:

@"Tinnel.4369" said:Anyone tried it? Power hammer still just feels too hard to stay on target and slow to kill. Days of sustain, but not enough punch. Seems to me all that sustain would be better served stacking condis and letting them tick.

Good video but it really does point out the deficiencies of the pistol. Really low damage output..