Open world PVE - Shortbow Renegade - Condi vs Power?

[Rokeb.3815]

I am having a blast with a shortbow renegade currently - inspired originally by the Wooden Potatoes build. I have recently been running a more sustain setup with all Battlescar traits.Currently I'm equipped with a fairly decent set of exotic power gear - berserker with some soldier and running pack runes.

As I prepare to start building a set of ascended gear I am left wondering - should I be going condi??Unlike with other classes, the play style really isn't going to change much - I'd still run Kala and shortbow. (currently using Jallis as the other legendary as the whirling hammers are just so much fun on pocket raptors!)

How much difference is there really - and will I actually notice it? I have been using sword/sword a bit more lately which is fun, but I still tend to spend 90% of the time in short bow.For condi I'd be running mostly trailblazer gear (mostly exotic armor with everything else ascended). Thanks to our crazy crit chance bonuses, I can freely add Soldier, Cavalier or Valkyrie or even Wanderer or Crusader gear to add some toughness and vita as it's easy to hit the crit cap with double fury bones.

Runes of tormenting are very expensive (for me) and I'll be honest, I'll never bother getting nightmare runes, so I'd be left with Runes of the Undead or Krait runes as the more obvious options if I go condi.

I haven't managed to find any straight up comparisons of the two build types in open world play. Any thoughts from anyone who has tried both???

[Fueki.4753]

I'm running full Viper with Superior Runes of Nightmare on my Shortbow Renegade build, with Kalla and Mallyx as the legends.When using Kalla, I mostly use her for the healing skills and the Life Steal on the elite.When using Mallyx, I usually only use the elite in open world.

While I can't say how effective this is in comparison to a power build, this is what I feel most comfortable with.

[Buran.3796]

Condi builds using Renegade and short bow can go running either viper or trailblazer stats. The later one offers roughly ~90% of viper's dps because most of the damage from the short bow comes from conditions (from 80% to 90% in PvE, when the enemies usually don't clean the conditions they suffer). In this builds the optimal legend mix seems to be Kalla and Mallyx, and the best runes are Nightmare beacuse most of the damage comes from bleeds and burns, and not from torment. This is an example of the build:

Physical builds with Renegade and short bow on the other hand can vary from pure berserker to a mix between zerk, cavalier, commander and even diviner based on the amout of sustain and boon duration we want to achieve. Devastation traitline and the Jalis legend can be combined with Kalla to maximize damage and sustain, providing a large access to vulnerability, Kalla's Fervor and Battle Scars, which lets refill the HP at high rate and to have a broad access to protection, stability and damage mitigation, and let to use swords combined with the short bow without losing too much on the swap.. This is an example of that:

Finally, in not Renegade but Herald condition builds, mace axe/shields in trailblazer gear with torment runes are the best combination; Glint provides cc, damage reduction/absortion, cc and boons; Mallyx torment pressure and condition burst. Lord Hizen has a couple of videos about that build, albeit is currently working of it's take on Revenant at the end of this 2020.

So which (or other iteration as the Wooden Poatoes) one works best at PvE? Depends on tastes and goals, but those are my thoughs after trying all of them:

Woden Poatatoe's pure berserker build is better suited for solo open world normal content and instanced PvE content in terms of pure damage. But can't solo champions, bounties and legendary events designed for large team groups in the way that some of the other three can. Has more evades and blocks due the staff and Shiro, but the sustain and ability to fastly recover from damage is very limited there, and with less that 2300 armor, is a touch away from being one shooted in those scenarios.

The other 3 builds have way more armor (2900+) and sustain. Nike's DTN relies only in the short bow and the Renegade traitline + Kalla to achieve sustain, but has less evades; doesn't need much energy since most of the time just spams sb #, sb autoattack and f2, but the healing can be a problem since energy is needed to maximize sustain. The annoying part of that build is that lacks mobility once in combat.

Paper Roll's build has similar armor stats, but uses physical as the main source of damage and the conditions as a bonus damage. Is more energy consuming but a way larger pool, since has Charged Mist and is constantly depleting from 75 to <10 units. As results, uses a way more skills and also alternative weapons (swords). Has better mobility because Rapid Flow, and Kalla isn't the only source of sustain because Battle Scars. Has also access to perma-stability when needed, and Jalis can do notable damage while healing you at the same time and providing damage mitigation, all at once. On paper, usually condition beats power for solo content because you can use 2 stats to do the damage (condition, expertise) leaving thoughness and vitality as a nice bonus, but due how Devastation works it ends providing both damage and sustain. Invocation provides a large pool of energy and mobility while in combat (perma swiftess in both legends as long as you spent energy).

Hizen's build is different: is even more tanky, has good mobility in combat, very strong cc game... But is full mele (and a Herald build, not a Renegade one). Is still my favourite amongs those, but I don't like the short bow and hate the Kalla skills. For a Renegade build, after playing the three, I like more the Paper Roll's build because adds more variety (sb, swords), makes both legends equally functional and have more sources of sustain, plus the mobility is better than in the one from Nike. That are my two cents.

[Rokeb.3815]

Thanks for the very detailed insight. it's good to hear from someone who's tried both.I've watched and learned from all those videos - all the builds seem very good - it is nice that both Power and Condi are valid options for Renegade.

Paper roll has published a new condi renegade build, quite similar in some respects to his power one. I'm a bit surprised he didn't make more comparisons to his old build.

I think I am going to have to try out mace and axe and see how I like the feel of them vs sword/sword in melee combat. I hated sword/sword for a long time, but now I'm enjoying it.

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

I've never liked the Power options, so for me its Trailblazer condi all the way. It's so powerful and sturdy. This is what I use.http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmwAUlfltQIsMKipRSsNCiNSgMDSgj8V/TH-zRJYkKmacZ0bKESFo30kinNA-e

[otto.5684]

I play both. Condi does more damage, but power is very formidable and more survival. And burst kills trash pretty quick.

[Dahkeus.8243]

I've run condi in open world and it will work, of course, but it's significantly slower on most everything. It can do great damage on high health enemies and the more challenging the encounter, the better it is, but in open world is almost always better to just be able to spike damage quickly to down weak mobs and move on.

Some classes are able to front load condis heavily enough for it not to be that bad, such as Ranger, but while condi renegade can do heavy DPS, the ramp up is slow.

[Buran.3796]

@"Rokeb.3815" said:

Paper roll has published a new condi renegade build, quite similar in some respects to his power one. I'm a bit surprised he didn't make more comparisons to his old build.

I just saw the new video and read the posts. The condition variant works fairly similar with the main change being replacing the stats for trailblazer and Invocation by Corruption. The condition variant does more damage, faster (the fastest killing is with Shiro but Jalis is quite close in time), but compared with the one based in physical damage is less tanky and has less "forgiveness":

• Because loses Rapid Flow becomes slow moving while in combat; to compensate that uses Traveler runes which deals less damage than Nightmare or Torment. This isn't dealbreaker because with Traveler still deals damage more faster than the physical variant and +25% movement speed is not as good as swiftness but is quite good given the circumstances. The problem is that also loses the Cleansing Channel, so to balance the weakness towards condi cleansing gives up the sigil of Bursting to get cleansing through sigil of Generosity which, again, is fine because even without it deals more damage than the physical damage build. Now, since the build uses trailblazer stats and there's almost no critical chance (~7%), relies on fury (+20%) and Brutal Momentum (+33%) to use that cleansing. Then, with Jalis fury is only granted with Endless Enmity. So: with Jalis you start at 40% crit chance if your endurance bar is full, but if you evade your crit chance will fall to 7% unless you already have fury, which only happens if you strike a foe below 50% HP. Also, without fury you won't get vigor. That means that against a powerful single target sometimes the only reliable cleanding will be the Jalis heal (which is very good but happens only once each 30 seconds). With Shiro access to fury is more easily achieved thanks to Riposting Shadows, but a lot of damage mitigation is lost.

• Then there's a second handicap: this condition build is as energy intensive as the physical one, but has no Charged Mists. If you look at the fights, you'll see that the HP falls below 30% more often than with the physical one despite having 550 less points of armor and 5850 less HP points. I think that is mainly due two reasons: first, you only have two sources of vulnerability to benefit from the life siphoning from Battle Scars (Icerazor's Ire), whereas the physical build has plenty of vulnerability stacked on the swords; the second reason is due the Charged Mists trait from Invocation gives you to spam more skills and stay under protection and damage mitigation for longer. The condi build uses Heartpiercer to increase the bleeding damage a 25% and pierce targets; the physical build doesn't rely on condition damage except as an extra bonus, therefore can afford to use All For One so all Kalla Skills provide protection (Jalis has the hammers and Rite of the Great Dwarf for mitigation and healings in every skill as traited, plus starting at 75 energy in each legend swap puts it in a more comfy stance).

  So: I think that the physical version is stronger. Has better pace in terms of energy spents, more damage mitigation and sustain through healings and life siphoning. Also, for mace + axe condi Herald works better because Torment runes provide huge sustain with those weapons and Mallyx but the benefit is mostly lost if you use a short bow with the Renegade. In both Herald and Renegade the most damaging builds come from viper stats, but in terms of sustain and being tankier trailblazer stats are better for Herald and for Renegade a mix between Cavalier/Diviner with parts of Commander/Marauder works the best.

[Rokeb.3815]

Thanks for the comments, analysis and insight.

I've put together a bit of cheapo condi set of gear for my renegade to see how it worked and get a feel. Mostly trail blazer armor with a Viper helmet and chest piece along with a grieving bow. I've borrowed nearly a full set of trailblazer trinkets from my condi Firebrand, and put the traveler runes in the armor as they are dirt cheap anyway dire mace and axe to try them out - total investment about 4 gold and some airship parts.To compare to my power renegade - all beserker weapons and armor with a beserker amulet and soldier gear for the rest of the trinkets. Running pack runes and +5 dmg sigil and sigil of bloodlust.

First impressions are decent - damage is slightly higher for the condi build with better total armor and health. some of the damage increase comes from Invoking torment however which has a limited range.
Fixing the gear hower, seems like it will only continue to make the damage better and the health/armor stats higher. The power build is pretty much capped at damage, I can certainly improve it but it will cut into the damage a bit.

One big 'quality of life' difference is important to note:

Jallis's whirling hammer is like a weed whacker for Pocket Raptors while running the power version - it's like they run into a blender. Triple pack? No problem. They just turn into a red mist.

The condi build will kill them, but much more slowly, a quick glance indicates only about a third of the damage of my power setup.

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

@"Rokeb.3815" said:One big 'quality of life' difference is important to note:

Jallis's whirling hammer is like a weed whacker for Pocket Raptors while running the power version - it's like they run into a blender. Triple pack? No problem. They just turn into a red mist.

The condi build will kill them, but much more slowly, a quick glance indicates only about a third of the damage of my power setup.

Mallyx Embrace the Darkness is the condi weed whacker. :) Especially with critters like pocket raptors that are moving constantly, they just kill themselves faster. Call to Anguish AoE pull is nice for grouping, then EtD, then move around just a step or two to make the mobs move, and EtD just melts stuff.

[phokus.8934]

Jalis Hammer's does no't have a target cap.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@phokus.8934 said:Jalis Hammer's does no't have a target cap.

They do. All of the Jalis abilities are 5 targets except for Vengeful Hammers which is 3 targets. You only get an illusion that there isn't one, since you have essentially three projectiles spinning around you, but they only hit one target per hammer at a time.

[UncreativeGreen.2019]

Just posted this in the Hizen Post complaining about the kala spirits (which is justified) But it makes more sense to post it here since this is more about theory crafting and just builds in general, so sorry for the wall.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmyAwyZltQMsMqjpResNijNSkMDigpu1+rH-zRZYBBZsFUIc09hdOhpQKUE0qEsXBR0CowFCK+CIQC4zvfQDFOjA-e

This is an Open World Power Renegade adapted for my personal taste. It has instant and permanent 25 might, fury, vigor, protection, 25% movement speed, and with a pretty simple rotation I’ll talk about below, 80% quickness and 70% alacrity uptime. It’s mostly diviner to get to a nice sweet spot where most boons are maintained at their desired duration while not dropping below 47% crit chance for 100% crits (47base + 33brutal momentum +20fury). It abuses vulnerability spam like most power Renegade builds for battle scars broken life leeching sustain however it does also come with that permanent protection (-33inc power dmg) and Righteous Rebel (-33%inc condi dmg) which does help immensely with survivability. It has decent condi cleanse when it does need it and of course the standard break bar damage that rev is know for due to staff. Mostly standard stuff for a Power Renegade, however I think the difference is in a rotation I use and the way the traits interact that make this version unique.

Rotation as followed (start in Kalla) Darkrazor (30), Icerazor (20), LEGENDSWAP, Impossible odds toggle (-6ps), Deathstrike (10), Chilling Isolation (5), auto attack spam, at around 25 energy or 1s left till you can swap use Orders from Above (20) LEGENDSWAP Darkrazor (30), Icerazor (20), Shackling Wave (10), auto attack spam, Darkrazor (30), Icerazor (20) LEGENDSWAP … Repeat from the Impossible odds toggle.

This rotation opens with instantaneous 25 might, fury, vigor, prot, quickness and trash mobs just explode before you get to Deathstrike. Some vets take more of the rotation, but you generally don’t get into the full thing till you are fighting champions. For those who care, In my testing I was reliably hitting 14.5k dps both on Open World champions in lvl 80 zones and on the golem with only the conditions and buffs the build provides by itself, which is insane for a self-contained Open World build. For note, if you’re questioning the use of alacrity, it’s mainly for getting the Razor’s down to a 9s cooldown so we can use them twice in a single Kalla swap rather than having to wait the full 12 (plus in group events its nice to support others). Also, each legend swap consumes 100 to 110 energy depending on delays or not, so feel free to swap out skills to equal out to the same amount. However do not sub out darkrazor’s daring. This skill is vital to maintaining many of the boons. Darkrazor on a single target alone over its duration procs 6 applications of fury, (sometimes vigor) 32 might, protection, 10 vuln, cripple, 10 battle scars, 8s of quickness, and daze spams keep mobs (that don’t have break bars) from attacking, protecting both you and your spirits from taking damage/cc.

Final note. You can adapt this build to use a short bow however there is a few trait changes I would make to do so. Also the build is tailored to me and is not min maxed. For example, I have the food the way it is cause it only adds more damage but sometimes I don’t run food. If you use food all the time you could min max the stats with the gear to get overall a better spread. You can absolutely run this in exotics too, you will just have less stats in certain areas and will need to hit 47% crit chance and 66% boon duration by other means.

Sorry for the wall, but if you read this far, Thanks! If you try out my adaptation of the Power Renegade let me know what you think or If you have any questions. I will also take critiques! I Love seeing all your guys’ builds so please keep them coming while I continue stalking the forums.

[phokus.8934]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@phokus.8934 said:Jalis Hammer's does no't have a target cap.

They do. All of the Jalis abilities are 5 targets except for Vengeful Hammers which is 3 targets. You only get an illusion that there isn't one, since you have essentially three projectiles spinning around you, but they only hit one target per hammer at a time.

I'm pretty sure based on what I've tested a while back the hammers are independent of 3 targets. The 3 hammers will hit multiple at once but never more than the same target one at a time.