Should I Gear a Power Dragonhunter or a Condi Firebrand for Raids and Fractals?

[haventr.1630]

For reference, I already have a Condi BS Warrior, Healing Druid, Power Weaver, Condi Renegade, and a Power Chrono(if this would somehow influence the result).

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

According to qT's latest benchmarks and GW2Raidar's averages... go with either. They both perform about the same.

[Amineo.8951]

Go with Harrier Firebrand, become the ultimate carry.

[ButcherofMalakir.4067]

For some fractals dh is better cause you dont have time to stack conditions in some fights and some enemies are imune to burning

[Azoqu.8917]

I personally have been running around as a FB ever since the expansion dropped. Burning lasts such a short time compared to other damage conditions that the "burst" is still basically there. You gain the ability to bust out some pretty clutch plays with the support tomes but you do become practically useless against the effigy (burn immune, like come on Anet and fix that already just like you did for blinding dredge, condi guardian, unlike other condi specs, lives and dies on their burn damage)

[Rennie.6750]

You'll usually get more damage with DH because of the lack of ramp-up for power damage (firebrand does need a good 5-6s to get started), except when you got adds giving xp to reset your tome with the radiance trait. This is rare though, most fractals and raids rip you off and more often than not, it doesn't work. FB is far more survivable though and has several 'damn i messed up' things that make it really nice, like the condi cleanse mantra (I don't think I'd enjoy playing fractals without it now) or F2 heals spamming when your team is struggling with mechanics or to heal yourself when you can't do damage because of mechanics.

 

I chose firebrand myself because I like having more tools in my toolbox and it lets me cover more issues that come with fractal pugs. I may lose a bit of damage (and that's debatable, the firebrand rotation is really trivial once you know where your big damage comes from, and it's not relying on any kind of synergy at all, which is really nice) but things always die eventually so I take the extra tools anyway.

 

With DH you really need to be careful about your positioning and all the things that increase your dmg like symbol uptime, retaliation, and combos for cleansing yourself with GS 4 and 2. You also need to be very conservative with your limited health pool. As firebrand you need to be aware of boss phases and fight mechanics because you need to have a higher time on target to deal good enough damage. You can also YOLO a bit and see what happens, FB toys can get you out of pretty bad stuff.

[Zenith.7301]

Power DH. Better CC, better utility on a DPS spec, and actual burst aoe/cleave. You have 2 pulls at your disposal, one of them aoe.

 

And despite the constant whining in these fora, the viable power specs actually perform better than condi specs on the hard bosses besides Matthias.

 

Xera, Sabetha, Gorseval, VG, and Deimos all favor power damage significantly. Only Matthias and Cairn show an obvious bias for conditions.

 

Power specs also reign supreme in fractals.