Guild Wars 2

I’ve 2 full power professions and I’d like to make a viper set for a condi class.

Engi seems to have a little more dps/utility but I’m not really sure.

Advices?

Both Engineer and Necromancer are very strong right now. Necromancer scales better into some encounters like Sloth/Sab due to Epidemic bouncing, though, so if you were going to only make one set I’d make it for that.

Engineer have the highest dps in Viper, but it’s really hard to reach that dps because of the ’’complexe’’ rotation. It also have a lot of quality of life which make fight easier, but don’t really bring utility vital for raid. We used to have slick shoes, but that’s over. That’s why, even if it’s a good choice, it’s not really that popular.

Reaper is the most popular condi in raid currently. When you test it, it will have a recently low dps compare to other profession, but there is a lot of little tricks that the reaper can do to boost his dps. For exemple, a healer can keep his jagged horror alive longer, the longer the fight the more horrors he can spawn, reaper is godly against adds, if you have 2 reapers you can bounce epidemic, you can take condi from your team and give them to the boss, etc. All of those trick are hard to test out, but boost the dps of the reaper significantly against some boss like Gorseval, Sabetha, Trio Bandits and Slothazor.

You also have Druids. The condition version of Druid is probably the best build for druids in raid, but it’s mostly for good groups or when you have 2 Druids in your group. Most pugs or less skilled group will prefer you to camp Staff or have some healing power, which is better in power version. Mostly because a Druid doesn’t have much dps anyway, so why not focus on healing and make the job of the rest of your team easier.

You also have other options, but they are not that popular. Elementalist have decent dps compare to other condi, but why use condi on Elementalist when the power version is the best dps of the game. The condi ele is also higly dependent on static attack so moving target drop his dps significantly. I heard of condi thief, but I don’t have solid numbers on it so I’m not sure.

If you want a steady place in pug, definitively Reaper. That’s a good choice and it’s popular, meaning people will want you.

Condi thief gets no love. It has just as high of a ceiling as engineer and is an easier rotation and has more CC (now that slick shoes is gone). It doesn’t do very well in fights where you waste venoms on adds, but if you time it right it can be very effective. It also has insane opening burst by using venoms twice in a row.

Ok butter tell me if I have something wrong. You tested with full buff and you got at max about 20.9k dps right? It would have been higher with 4 other players using your venomshare, something that would be interesting to test.

But if you compare that to other profession with full buff you get

Reaper : 23.5k
Engie : 31k

For the reaper the number could be higher with a druid to keep horror alive, longer fight for more horrors, epidemic bounce, etc. While the engineer could be lower with someone not as good with the rotation.

That said, it seem that condi Thief have lower dps than I was hoping. But maybe I didn’t saw something. I hope because if I didn’t condi thief seem be equal in dps to a Druid Condi Healer.

Did you see the math at the end? It ends up around 31k.

I went in as a solo player and did two tests:
1. No venoms
2. Using venoms

Then I subtracted the difference between the two. This should account for the damage from 1 instance of the venoms. (RNG aside with crits and such)

Then I multiplied that difference by 5 in order to account for the venoms being shared to 5 people. That ended up being around 15k DPS just the venoms. Then I added the “venomshare” damage to the baseline with no venoms. This ended up around 31k which is right where engi is.

Obviously this is a vacuum test where you have every buff, but so were the tests for condi engi. Reaper is probably the only class where the DPS could be much better than in this arena because you can’t keep your minions up as long (at least solo) and you can’t epidemic bounce.

ButterPeanut.9746:

Condi thief gets no love. It has just as high of a ceiling as engineer and is an easier rotation and has more CC (now that slick shoes is gone). It doesn’t do very well in fights where you waste venoms on adds, but if you time it right it can be very effective. It also has insane opening burst by using venoms twice in a row.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kTft63S6pw

I still use a condition Thief in basically all content. It’s incredibly strong and has the single strongest burst CC skill in-game. I’ve played it on Gorseval and a number of other raid encounters as well and it’s super strong. It has problems against adds and cleaving, as you noted, but it’s overall a ton of fun and has a built in ~75% evasion uptime on its rotation making it silly defensive. Good stuff all around!

Rising Dusk.2408:

ButterPeanut.9746:

Condi thief gets no love. It has just as high of a ceiling as engineer and is an easier rotation and has more CC (now that slick shoes is gone). It doesn’t do very well in fights where you waste venoms on adds, but if you time it right it can be very effective. It also has insane opening burst by using venoms twice in a row.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kTft63S6pw

I still use a condition Thief in basically all content. It’s incredibly strong and has the single strongest burst CC skill in-game. I’ve played it on Gorseval and a number of other raid encounters as well and it’s super strong. It has problems against adds and cleaving, as you noted, but it’s overall a ton of fun and has a built in ~75% evasion uptime on its rotation making it silly defensive. Good stuff all around!

Well said! The point of these tests for me was to prove that it could be a viable option. Every class scales with boons differently so the arena tests are always a little skewed. But the fact that I could equal or surpass a condi engi build with full boons on a standing still target means that this build is no slouch.

I did run it on the 4 million HP golem, but you can’t make him move so it is a loss in torment damage. It ended up around 28-29k.

Yea, it’s really hard to say what is best right now.

• Engi is great in ideal situations and synergizes well if you have an epi necro in the group (since it brings lots of burning), brings some condi removal/healing and also has good blinds for encounters with adds. However, it loses a lot of steam on messier fights and has a higher skill cap.

• Necro is very straight forward, can work very well at ranged, and epidemic is really strong on encounters with adds.

• Condi thief seems to have a lot of potential and is probably the closest replacement for slick shoes with shared basi venom. Skelk can give a good bit of sustain and the DPS seems to have a lot of potential from what was shown in the vid. However, I haven’t seen anything showing how it compares in a test without 100% alacrity since it will benefit a lot from this.

If I was to do some quick napkin math to guess what condi thief would be like without 100% alacrity, I’d guess that it’s around 25k, which is on par with a perfect rotation engi and necro under the same conditions:

16k DPS without venoms
15k DPS from venom share (delta calculation from video) with a 33% reduction = 10k DPS
16k DPS without venoms + 10k DPS from non-alacrity venoms = 26k

The lack of alacrity (or a-lack-rity…get it?) would reduce the 16k a bit since alacrity affects steal and Impairing daggers, but shouldn’t be that massive, which is why I’d guess 25k. Again this is rough math.

Source for DPS comparison of other builds without Alacrity: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ft01q/qt_dps_benchmarkstests_for_all_classes/

ButterPeanut.9746:

Did you see the math at the end? It ends up around 31k.

I went in as a solo player and did two tests:
1. No venoms
2. Using venoms

Then I subtracted the difference between the two. This should account for the damage from 1 instance of the venoms. (RNG aside with crits and such)

Then I multiplied that difference by 5 in order to account for the venoms being shared to 5 people. That ended up being around 15k DPS just the venoms. Then I added the “venomshare” damage to the baseline with no venoms. This ended up around 31k which is right where engi is.

Obviously this is a vacuum test where you have every buff, but so were the tests for condi engi. Reaper is probably the only class where the DPS could be much better than in this arena because you can’t keep your minions up as long (at least solo) and you can’t epidemic bounce.

Ya saw it after. Around 31k sound about right. That would put the Condi Thief right between the Tempest D/W and the Condi Engineer in the dps ranking. Would be nice to have a video of test with Normal Buff like qt.

Thaddeus.4891:

ButterPeanut.9746:

Did you see the math at the end? It ends up around 31k.

I went in as a solo player and did two tests:
1. No venoms
2. Using venoms

Then I subtracted the difference between the two. This should account for the damage from 1 instance of the venoms. (RNG aside with crits and such)

Then I multiplied that difference by 5 in order to account for the venoms being shared to 5 people. That ended up being around 15k DPS just the venoms. Then I added the “venomshare” damage to the baseline with no venoms. This ended up around 31k which is right where engi is.

Obviously this is a vacuum test where you have every buff, but so were the tests for condi engi. Reaper is probably the only class where the DPS could be much better than in this arena because you can’t keep your minions up as long (at least solo) and you can’t epidemic bounce.

Ya saw it after. Around 31k sound about right. That would put the Condi Thief right between the Tempest D/W and the Condi Engineer in the dps ranking. Would be nice to have a video of test with Normal Buff like qt.

I’ll do it later today.

Dahkeus.8243:

Yea, it’s really hard to say what is best right now.

• Engi is great in ideal situations and synergizes well if you have an epi necro in the group (since it brings lots of burning), brings some condi removal/healing and also has good blinds for encounters with adds. However, it loses a lot of steam on messier fights and has a higher skill cap.

• Necro is very straight forward, can work very well at ranged, and epidemic is really strong on encounters with adds.

• Condi thief seems to have a lot of potential and is probably the closest replacement for slick shoes with shared basi venom. Skelk can give a good bit of sustain and the DPS seems to have a lot of potential from what was shown in the vid. However, I haven’t seen anything showing how it compares in a test without 100% alacrity since it will benefit a lot from this.

If I was to do some quick napkin math to guess what condi thief would be like without 100% alacrity, I’d guess that it’s around 25k, which is on par with a perfect rotation engi and necro under the same conditions:

16k DPS without venoms
15k DPS from venom share (delta calculation from video) with a 33% reduction = 10k DPS
16k DPS without venoms + 10k DPS from non-alacrity venoms = 26k

The lack of alacrity (or a-lack-rity…get it?) would reduce the 16k a bit since alacrity affects steal and Impairing daggers, but shouldn’t be that massive, which is why I’d guess 25k. Again this is rough math.

Source for DPS comparison of other builds without Alacrity: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ft01q/qt_dps_benchmarkstests_for_all_classes/

The point that I wanted to make with this video is that there doesn’t necessarily have to be a “best”. Necro, Engi, Thief, Burn PS warrior, and Druid all have pros and cons for condition damage builds. Every group will be a bit different. Unfortunately if you aren’t engi or necro a pug group probably won’t take you, but maybe some analysis and awareness for condi thief can change that

yo, just a heads up
I did a dps test with a much-less-than-optimally-geared condi ele and got 32k dps
so ele is still top dps even if you go condi with it.

edit: This was against the large size golem, though. All ele builds benefit from increased hitbox size.

Chill used to do 650-1100 damage per sec, nerfed now into a 100-150 bleed for 8 sec. And reaper was already quite a bit weaker (epidemic not counting) in condi application then Engineer.

I can’t see Necromancer good enough these days unless they get carried by ‘over dps’ing’ allies (34k dps elementalists). Except maybe in Sabetha fight were Epidemic is usefull. I say this not as offence, but with a sad heart, that second viper set for necromancer costed quite a bit!

reikken.4961:

yo, just a heads up
I did a dps test with a much-less-than-optimally-geared condi ele and got 32k dps
so ele is still top dps even if you go condi with it.

edit: This was against the large size golem, though. All ele builds benefit from increased hitbox size.

Also condi elementalist is probably one of the build the most affected by moving target since a lot of the attacks are static like your fields. Would be interesting to test the same build with a moving golem.

Dahkeus.8243:

15k DPS from venom share (delta calculation from video) with a 33% reduction = 10k DPS

math is a bit off there
it would be 15k/1.33 = 11.3k

With ele, most of your condi comes from burns, and most burn abilities are on target, so moving targets matters less.
Moving targets affect power eles more I think (Lava Font and MS).

So, is condi war kind of pointless then at this point? Trying to decide if I keep my war’s condi set, or move stuff to my ele.

Ven Zehn.6573:

With ele, most of your condi comes from burns, and most burn abilities are on target, so moving targets matters less.
Moving targets affect power eles more I think (Lava Font and MS).

So, is condi war kind of pointless then at this point? Trying to decide if I keep my war’s condi set, or move stuff to my ele.

Condi warrior is pretty…meh, but it still works. I wouldn’t salvage anything, even if it wasn’t worth running anyways since you never know when something will get buffed.

And I wouldn’t jump on ele just yet. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of proof backing up the numbers, especially on a moving target, and even if the dps is a bit better, there’s still the question of utility. There’s not really much you gain from a condi ele that you wouldn’t get from a power ele. It’s really not much different than a condi engi (burns + heal utility), except you’re a lot more reliant on being in melee.

If it were me rerolling to something fresh, I’d go power ele or I’d go with a condi spec that had a more of a specific utility (such as thief for break bar or necro for epi).

Ven Zehn.6573:

With ele, most of your condi comes from burns, and most burn abilities are on target, so moving targets matters less.
Moving targets affect power eles more I think (Lava Font and MS).

So, is condi war kind of pointless then at this point? Trying to decide if I keep my war’s condi set, or move stuff to my ele.

You are wrong. Flamewall, Glyph of Storms, Burning Speed, Fiery Eruption and Firestorm are all static attack. I’m not saying that Staff ele isn’t affected a lot by moving target, but condi tempest are affected even more because. Several of those attack have long cooldown are in line and not in circle.

As for condi Warrior. There is really no reason right now to use it. It have about the same dps as a PS Warrior, while bringing less buff. That said, it still have correct dps so it can still do the job in Fractal and Dungeon if you already have. But I wouldn’t gear one right now. They overnerfed it a bit, it should get a 20-30% buff to his dps to get around the same dps of a guardian. It shouldn’t be higher because a condi warrior still bring some buffs, but it shouldn’t be lower because it doesn’t bring as much buffs as the other profession like Druids, Mesmer and PS Warrior.

Oh, for burns I’d be picking different weapons/utilities, and I’d only run condi if it’s necessary, like on VG (and we don’t have enough people able to run condi)

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJARWnsAB1ChtCBWdC8DhlEiKb/+vAU+5j+r/aZDgDA-

Something like this maybe.

Also, you listed Firestorm Twice, and for Condi, not sure if that’s the best utility.

And, are there any bosses other than VG that require condi?

Firestorm is one of the skill of your Fiery GS, while Glyph of Storm is a utility. I didn’t listed it twice, they are different skill which do similar thing.

You can pick up different skill if you want. I’m not an expert on condi tempest tbh, but from the works of Wooden Potatoes and Particular the skills that I talked about are the best if you want the highest dps you can on a condi tempest. Of course maybe there is other ways to play condi tempest which have less dps in static fight, but could have better dps against moving target. Something that would need to be tested.

And yes VG is the only raid boss that require condi. Not the only boss where condi build can do a good job.

Btw you linked a weird guardian build there. I don’t know what it have to do with condi tempest.

Oh, weird, guess I clicked the wrong thing:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJArYnMIClMgNOAmNA8RgBBAr2khhzQEAClHg5HsDKCA-TxhAABfq+z1K/sUJIM7PA9DAAgTAgg6BIFgiitA-e

Thaddeus.4891:

You are wrong. Flamewall, Glyph of Storms, Burning Speed, Fiery Eruption and Firestorm are all static attack. I’m not saying that Staff ele isn’t affected a lot by moving target, but condi tempest are affected even more because. Several of those attack have long cooldown are in line and not in circle.

Actually, being in a line is better, if the target moves predictably. You can lay the line across the movement path

Anyway, I did some tests, and very little dps is lost on the moving golem (like 10%), since it moves in a predictable fashion. Most of the raid bosses move predictably as well. The biggest factor is actually the size of the hitbox.

Condition Ele’s biggest problem is that other than damage it doesn’t do a lot, though. It’s just raw damage, in which case why not use a power Ele which is stronger? The nice niche about condition Necro/Thief/Engi is that they offer a lot of unique utility that helps in myriad ways. Even condition Warrior is more useful IMO because at least that can bring a banner / FGS to free up a slot on a PS War.

• Engineer: Cleave heals from Water blasts, great add control with hard CC utility, lots of collateral conditions that can make adds a lot more tolerable.
• Thief: Incredible CC, great sustain boost thanks to Leeching Venoms and the newly buffed Skelk Venom, 75%+ evasion uptime for surprising bulk, amazing mobility.
• Necromancer: Incredibly bulky with no investment, good personal Stability, incredibly high potential DPS with tricks, DPS loss at range is minimal.

Maybe I’m just missing something, though. What does condi Ele really add to the mix other than like WtPA?

Only real reason I brought up condi ele was for situations where condi is required. Else I have no desire to play condi lol. Only other particularly effective condi class I’d have is Berzerker, but apparently those aren’t as effective anymore, and wanted to see if my Ele could handle the role just as well, and after VG is done, I’d swap back to power.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Condition Ele’s biggest problem is that other than damage it doesn’t do a lot, though. It’s just raw damage, in which case why not use a power Ele which is stronger? The nice niche about condition Necro/Thief/Engi is that they offer a lot of unique utility that helps in myriad ways. Even condition Warrior is more useful IMO because at least that can bring a banner / FGS to free up a slot on a PS War.

• Engineer: Cleave heals from Water blasts, great add control with hard CC utility, lots of collateral conditions that can make adds a lot more tolerable.
• Thief: Incredible CC, great sustain boost thanks to Leeching Venoms and the newly buffed Skelk Venom, 75%+ evasion uptime for surprising bulk, amazing mobility.
• Necromancer: Incredibly bulky with no investment, good personal Stability, incredibly high potential DPS with tricks, DPS loss at range is minimal.

Maybe I’m just missing something, though. What does condi Ele really add to the mix other than like WtPA?

^ Add condi removal to engi.

As for ele, not sure, but you could probably add rebound.

Ven Zehn.6573:

Oh, weird, guess I clicked the wrong thing:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJArYnMIClMgNOAmNA8RgBBAr2khhzQEAClHg5HsDKCA-TxhAABfq+z1K/sUJIM7PA9DAAgTAgg6BIFgiitA-e

nah, not good

Pyromancer’s training is the best trait you have. dunno why you wouldn’t take it.

Arcane power gets you a lot more burning than arcane blast. And besides, glyph of elemental power gets you more burning than arcane power+elemental surge without taking up a grandmaster trait. You might take evasive arcana, but overload fire is better, even if the boss moves out at the end. Plus you lose wash the pain away.
You might take arcane instead of earth, though. not sure which is better.

Dagger off hand might be good.
Scepter is fine against a small moving target, but I still got the same dps with dagger mainhand on the moving golem with its small hitbox, and it’s better against anything else, so you may as well use dagger. UNLESS you are in need of might. Scepter/warhorn stacks more might than a PS warrior, with permafury to boot.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

I can’t see Necromancer good enough these days unless they get carried by ‘over dps’ing’ allies (34k dps elementalists). Except maybe in Sabetha fight were Epidemic is usefull.

Have you even… set foot in wing 2? Eh, nevermind won’t bother

Rising Dusk.2408:

Condition Ele’s biggest problem is that other than damage it doesn’t do a lot, though. It’s just raw damage, in which case why not use a power Ele which is stronger? The nice niche about condition Necro/Thief/Engi is that they offer a lot of unique utility that helps in myriad ways.

indeed no reason to go condi over power outside of VG, unless you have multiple necros using epidemic

Ah yea, just threw that build together, and yea, I agree on Pyromancer’s training.
I’ve built it with Fire/Arcane/Tempest in the editor, which I also liked, just wasn’t sure how much it would actually bring to the table as far as a condi dmg build.
I feel if you did tempest, you’d lose out a bit on the dmg of the Earth line, where the grandmaster trait boosts your sigil of fire, shorter cooldown, and you maintain the precision buff.

On another note though, the build is very lacking in effective cc, so might not be so great overall in the end.

Dahkeus.8243:

Yea, it’s really hard to say what is best right now.

• Engi is great in ideal situations and synergizes well if you have an epi necro in the group (since it brings lots of burning), brings some condi removal/healing and also has good blinds for encounters with adds. However, it loses a lot of steam on messier fights and has a higher skill cap.

• Necro is very straight forward, can work very well at ranged, and epidemic is really strong on encounters with adds.

• Condi thief seems to have a lot of potential and is probably the closest replacement for slick shoes with shared basi venom. Skelk can give a good bit of sustain and the DPS seems to have a lot of potential from what was shown in the vid. However, I haven’t seen anything showing how it compares in a test without 100% alacrity since it will benefit a lot from this.

If I was to do some quick napkin math to guess what condi thief would be like without 100% alacrity, I’d guess that it’s around 25k, which is on par with a perfect rotation engi and necro under the same conditions:

16k DPS without venoms
15k DPS from venom share (delta calculation from video) with a 33% reduction = 10k DPS
16k DPS without venoms + 10k DPS from non-alacrity venoms = 26k

The lack of alacrity (or a-lack-rity…get it?) would reduce the 16k a bit since alacrity affects steal and Impairing daggers, but shouldn’t be that massive, which is why I’d guess 25k. Again this is rough math.

Source for DPS comparison of other builds without Alacrity: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ft01q/qt_dps_benchmarkstests_for_all_classes/

I was getting between 23.5-24.5k dps with the same math and the same buffs that QT did. Might, fury, quickness, banners, assassin’s presence, spotter, frost spirit, 2 grace of the land stacks, EA.

As we thought, this build does benefit a bit more from alacrity. But assuming 0 alacrity uptime isn’t correct either.

Yeah, I run the d/d vs thief on raids. It’s not the world’s worst rotation to run, and the lifesteal DPS+sustain as well as the easy CC spike from shared BV fills a lot of group comp holes. I especially like it on VG since you can swap to SB at a moment’s notice to cover if someone in the green circle squad goes down, or to res someone up (since you’re traited to auto-stealth on res) then steal right back to your target for very little lost DPS.

well 24k dps is nearly the same as engineer, so that’s pretty good

Also, one reason I would use condi outside of VG or trying to abuse epidemic is as healer. I’m getting more dps out of a build like this than out of a build like this or this.

Just wondering if something like this could work for condi ele http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBLhdygIUzAW0AY2AwHBWEAM3W7st2WggAQB4AA-TBiAQBWSJ41U6BSlBAUPA0eAAQU9HAcCAC4+DkCYRlVA-e

The combo of Elemental surge with arcane power is quite good. I did not try in the raid test area but in PvP lobby and one can easily stack more than 20 stack burn (well it is oscillating but in pvp I did not reach 100 % burning duration).
I just thought about this build at that time because you can easily ping pong the might with a PS and fury is not a problem… meaning the Herald can drop Glint for Mallyx and rotate between 2 DPS legends.
I never tested it for real though but maybe it is viable, though not optimal.

See this discussion on meta battle for an updated version of the condi thief build. Trickery wins out now due to the Lead Attacks trait.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Daredevil_-_Venom_Share

Chronos normally tank on VG but when there is another chronotank and I get assigned to run circles, this is the condi build I use:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAra7dnsIClphNoBWoBMrhlcDqMApu1o/YJzwMBvOkA-TxRFABrpnBgnAQK7P07JBYJlfHq+zgKBDAgAMzyMAGv4Fv4Fv4ZmzcmzcmzsUALqrC-e

Against the golem, this will do 25k with full buffs, 21k with realistic buffs, and 11k with just food and vulnerability – a common scenario for VG circle runners. Note that I’m using Rampager’s gear and over-capping precision. If anyone has tried this using a Viper setup, I’d like to hear how it compares.

Though the build works well for me, some who have tried it tell me they have trouble staying alive. Fortunately, the gear is cheap to obtain.

EDIT: Fixed build link