Gerroh

This discussion started in another thread, so rather than derail that thread off of its primary topic, we'll discuss this here.
The discussion involves engineer condition dmg vs nec condition dmg
In summary, I'm of the belief that nec condition damage is more powerful largely because of epidemic.
Mastif believes engineer condition damage is more powerful because engineers can apply more bleeds.
This discussion is, of course, not limited to just myself and Mastif, and I encourage all others to give their input, and I have started this without consulting Mastif first, so he may or may not even post here.
Furthermore, if you believe a profession other than nec or engineer can out-do either one of them, say so.
And lastly, this is not a thread about how useless or worthless you believe condition damage to be. This is just about who does it better.

matsif, on 14 May 2013 - 03:53 PM, said:

Are we talking about soloing things with condition damage or working as a team with condition damage? Epidemic's strength partly comes from the fact that the other professions in the team will apply conditions as a secondary effect to an otherwise power-driven build.
Plus, if vuln is a sincere concern, we can bring spectral wall. Running over it once is pretty much a guarantee for every enemy(aside from stationary enemies, ofc), if placement is correct. Running over it twice is common. 10 stacks of vuln per time an enemy crosses it, and it also gives protection to allies.
And your burning- if you're using traits to get it on grenade kit -is negligible, as it'll only be on one enemy, for 4 seconds out of every 10 seconds. Without epidemic, you might as well not even bring it for fighting groups.
Condition damage nec also purges the team of conditions and (with mark of blood) applies perma-regeneration to any allies who are on the frontline. And let's not even get started on the weakness spam.

matsif, on 14 May 2013 - 03:53 PM, said:

Grenade radius is trash compared to that of Enfeebling Blood(Dagger 5), Grasping Dead(Scepter 2), and big marks.
Grenades normally have 120 and 150 radius for each individual grenade, while Enfeebling Blood, Grasping Dead, and big marks all have a radius of 240. The area each individual grenade covers is 45,239 units of area for 120 grenades, and 70,686 units of area for each 150 grenade. By comparison, nec counterparts cover 180,956 units of area, much more than double the larger grenades. Unless you've packed all of your targets into one tight corner, nec skills are going to blow you away.
And no, you cannot ever apply more bleeds than an epidemic nec. You cannot. Don't even try. You have 3 separate sources of aoe bleeding, that's nice, so do condition damage necs(Well, actually 4 if you want to count dark path, but let's not), but ours are larger radius to begin with and we have epidemic to double it all.

(I also need to point out that the tooltips for several nec skills are still incorrect. Grasping dead, with no traits, applies 3 stacks of bleed, while scepter auto-attack applies bleeding that lasts longer than what it states(wiki says 5 sec, what I've seen says 8 sec))

matsif, on 14 May 2013 - 03:53 PM, said:

That's why you swap it out before the boss fight for something like BiP(Which gives 10 stacks of might and retardculous bleeding duration), or whatever situational utility would be best suited.

Also, it's a lot harder to hit moving enemies with grenades than it is to hit them with nec skills. Big marks are a guaranteed hit unless the target goes invuln.

So I got this idea yesterday about adding a bit of a "challenge" to dying. It's not a big deal, just something fun to try out, and it might lead you to try some of the dyes you normally don't use.
The rules are simple: You can only use any given dye once in the entire dye scheme.
No two pieces of armor may share the same dye, no piece of armor may use the same dye twice, and lastly, it has to look (what you consider to be) good.

Here's my result:
I also wanted it to match the sylvari T3 weapons in this case.
The dyes and pieces are:
(Heavy) Nightmare Helmet: Marine, Fresh Green, Stem
Oaken Shoulder Guard: Swamp Grass, Hydrangea, Spring Dew
Warden Coat: Envy, Khaki, Pastel Olive
Warden Gloves: Moss, Robin, Spring Moss
Warden Leggings: Grass, Olive Oil, Midnight Olive
Warden Boots: Midnight Green, Green Shade, Limette

I've heard of the "Dragons are the gods" thing and always found issues with it. I'm not big on lore, but right away I spotted that the 6 gods as wholes do not line up to the 6 dragons as wholes. For example, who the hell is Jormag? Grenth? But then who is Zhaitan? So on and so on.
But I have a similar idea.
I don't know if it's been suggested before, I think this is my first time posting in the lore forum, and I'm honestly not too big on the lore stuff, but here goes.
(I'm a bit of a scatterbrain right now, so I'll just put it in point form)
-Human "gods" discover dragons and the magic the dragons spew from their sleeping bodies(As Vekk mentioned in GW1)
-Human gods don't tell the humans about the discovery, and instead pose as though they're the source of the magic
-Each human god takes some of this, some of that, and picks what they want to be the "god" of.
-Each of these "gods" is concerned that overusing the magic will awaken the dragons and then they're gonna have a Hollywood-style scandal on their hands plus the end of the world.
-Abaddon isn't as concerned, wants to share magic with other races, the other gods feel a little disgruntled about this and lock him away.
-Overuse of dragon-sourced magic wakes up the dragons.

Why did I think of this?
Each of the dragons has some kind of magic that each of the gods also has, but the gods themselves, as mentioned before, don't match up perfectly with the dragons.
Some of these are obvious; Grenth took ice from Jormag and death from Zhaitan, and Melandru took nature crap from the sylvari dragon.
Some are a little harder to set straight, such as where Dwayna gets her powers. We know, from GW1, that Dwayna has control of lightning, so there's Kralkatorrik there, but where does the healing come from?

As I mentioned, I don't know lore as deeply as some people, so if there's a problem with this idea, or anything you can add to it, go ahead and point it out.

I'm fairly certain it was the update we got just now, 'cause I tested them after the Jan 28th update and they still didn't work. But I've just tested, both in stats and with skills in action, that the +10% condition duration from giver weapons works now. Pretty *ing late, but it's better late than never. I still wonder what they were thinking releasing a stat set that didn't work back in Dec.

The update tonight is causing an infinite loading screen. I can't even log into my main character now because of this. >=T